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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

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number5theboy · 4 years

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Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger, @waywardd1 and @margarita-umbrella also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

#thanks for the ask again #TUA #The Umbrella Academy #Five Hargreeves #tua s2 spoilers #my meta #i guess #Replies #Anonymous

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bartramcat · 4 years

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CSI/GSR: A Long Strange Analysis From San Francisco to Grave Danger

(This is way too long and all over the map. Nor do I think it’s necessarily coherent, but it’s kind of my stream of consciousness overview of the first 5 seasons of GSR, mainly first impressions, slightly refined. Well, as Alex Trebek always said: go with your first instinct.)

So when I decided to rewatch Sex, Lies and Larvae recently, I found myself having a rather surprising reaction to the GSR dynamic therein. Sara came across to me as incredibly young in that episode, so much so that I decided that was one reason, of many, why I was glad they didn't get them together from the get-go. Well, actually, for most of the first 2 seasons, she seems too young to be an equal partner in a relationship with Grissom. That doesn't mean I think they weren't in love at that point, only that perhaps she had some growing up to do first. Actually, they both did.

Grissom and Sara are an interesting case in that they both suffer from a similar affliction common in the exceptionally bright: their intellects are so far ahead of their peers that they rarely have any way to relate to them. Certainly not emotionally. The first thing to be sacrificed on the altar of intellectuality is emotional development and well-being. Toss in the horrific childhood Sara had and the silent one for Grissom, and you have a cocktail for arrested development. As long as they are operating on an intellectual plane, they are in their element. Put them in an interpersonal one, and they flounder like fish out of water.

By the time Grissom meets Sara, it is fairly clear he has found one way to relate to others: as teacher and/or mentor. It is in fact his most common relationship with all of those in his circle. It is also his initial dynamic with Sara, elements of which remain for the duration of their love story. It is for him a perfect construct: he can take personal pride and pleasure in their development as CSIs, but, at the same time, maintain that professorial distance, dissuading them from even attempting to fathom the man behind the intellectual mask. He is an enigma, an eccentric, whose mind works in mysterious ways. They admire him, respect him, possibly even love him, but they do not know him.

(I've always thought a good deal of their shock at learning he was in love with Sara stemmed not only from the fact that he was in love with Sara but from the fact that he was in love. With anyone.)

In Pledging Mr. Johnson, Catherine gives us insight into how Grissom lives his life and how they view him:

CATHERINE: You're right, you know. I should be just like you. Alone in my hermetically sealed condo, watching Discovery on the big screen, working genius-level crossword puzzles. But no relationships, no chance any will slop over into a case. Yeah, right. I want to be just like you.

GRISSOM: Technically it's a townhouse. And the crosswords are advanced, not genius. But you're right, I'm deficient in a lot of ways. But I never screw up one of my cases with personal stuff.

CATHERINE: Grissom... WHAT personal stuff?

But Sara sees beneath the mask. It’s as if she knows intuitively there’s more to him than meets the eye. In San Francisco, did he show her a side to himself that no one else ever saw? Outside of Vegas, was he able to be a little more open with this inquisitive and very bright young woman? Was he instinctively more comfortable and trusting with her? Did they have a quasi-romantic relationship? We know they fell in love, but as to how far they took things, we'll never know.

Grissom had several qualms regarding a romantic relationship with Sara, not the least of which is the age difference. He genuinely believed that if he gave himself over to her completely that she would throw him over someday. That she would come to see him as old and unworthy and “deficient,” and he would be lost. I'm not entirely sure his fear of ultimate rejection began when she came to Vegas, even if they had previously consummated their relationship in SF. Of course, once she did come to Vegas, they both had a problem. She obviously thought their relationship was going to go forward, whereas he became aware that it couldn't without putting his job in jeopardy. Whether he brought her to Vegas thinking they could be/become lovers is again purely speculative. With Grissom however there is always the dichotomy between what he thinks and what he feels, especially where Sara is concerned. What we do know is that once he had her there he didn't want her to leave.

We know from his own words that she was the only woman he ever loved and that he found sex without love pointless. So, of course, the one person who becomes the one and only object of both his love and his desire is Forbidden Fruit. On all sorts of levels, objective and subjective.

While there is always an element of mentor/mentee in GSR, even including their very last "date" together, playing with the colored bees, I think the fundamental difference between the way he relates to Sara and everyone else is that he is more sharing his world with her than simply teaching her about it. That we learn that he gave her an entomology textbook for Christmas says...so much. Yet in episodes like SLAL, she comes across as a little too much the eager student, the subordinate, and not the perfect life partner for him she grew into. Perhaps he saw it too, reinforcing his fear that he had no business loving this young woman who would one day only see him as a pathetic old man. (Or worse: what she felt for him was no more than a temporary crush of a student on her teacher.)

One of the things the great love stories tend to have in common is that the 2 lovers usually have to go through life experiences, or "tests," in order to "earn" the other person. Since I see GSR as a Salvation rather than a Redemption love story, it's not a matter of them somehow becoming more moral people in order to be together. Rather, I think it's more a matter of their both growing and growing up.

There are several instances of gender reversal in their relationship, and I'm referring to traditional sexual behavior in fiction. Usually, it is the female in the relationship who turns the male down sexually. Seeing the relationship going nowhere, he is the one who is more likely to get involved in a casual relationship to meet his sexual needs. In GSR, it is Sara who goes outside the relationship. She gets involved with Hank, the guy who is like watching paint dry. We know Sara has serious self-esteem issues; being rejected by Grissom after she was so sure he wanted her as much as she wanted him didn't help. So, at his suggestion, she gets a life, unaware that fucking another guy was not exactly what he meant. It damn near kills him; he can't even look at her. At the same time, his life is on a downward spiral: he is going deaf. He thinks he has nothing to offer her, but he uses the job to try to come between them. To keep her away from Hank, unaware that all he ever had to do was say the word, and she would have dropped Hank faster than yesterday's crossword.

Of course, in Grissom's mind, he was no competition for Hank, when, in reality, Hank was never real competition for him, if he had been able to come to terms with his feelings for Sara and act on them. I do think the Hank episode was important for both of them. For the first time Grissom had to confront the possibility he really could lose her forever by keeping their relationship purely on his terms, and Sara learned that no matter how much she tried to get a life that Grissom would always be number one in her heart.

The end of season 3 is the beginning of the first dark period for Sara. She learns that her attempt to get a life outside of her love for Grissom is an abysmal failure. While dating Hank never comes close to changing her love for Grissom, at least it was a way to keep her from moping around her apartment waiting for the man who was never going to show up. Then she discovers she's the other woman, Hank's side girl. Not that I think she was ever broken-hearted over ending it with him in any life-changing way, but she was humiliated. It sort of reinforced her idea that she was never good enough, even for a non-entity like Hank. So how could she ever be good enough for the man who was her ideal, her one and only, whom she had loved instantly and always? And, again, he turns her down.

Season 4 is what lays the groundwork for both of them to grow up. The first half of the season is the fallout from her offering and his rejecting her. The second half is her discovering he did, in fact, have feelings for her, had considered her as a potential second chance, only to place his job above any chance of happiness with her. That she was not worth taking a risk. It really is fairly amazing she didn't just say I'm outta here and go back to SF at that point.

While the two of them continue to dance around the central issue between them, in season 4 it seems that Sara is taking Grissom's own approach to things: she wants to advance in her profession. I've always been of the opinion that the reason Grissom chose Nick over Sara for the promotion was that he thought choosing Sara would be an act of favoritism on his part. He knew deep down inside he was in love with her, but he had to prove to himself that he could be objective where she was concerned. (His reasons for choosing Nick smack of rationalization.) Sara reads it as his way of continuing to punish her, as well as making it seem that she isn't good enough on any level, personal or professional, for Grissom. By the end of Season 4, she hits rock bottom. She came to Vegas for a man she can't have and for a job she can't advance in, ironically, because of that same man.

While Nesting Dolls is the episode that most directly makes the GSR love affair possible, I actually think the last scene of Bloodlines is what makes that episode possible. I have always felt that when he saw her sitting there humiliated that he realized 2 things: one was that no matter how much he denied it, he loved her, and the other was that by pushing her away that he was hurting both of them.

In order for Grissom to grow up, that is what he had to learn: that a love relationship has to work for both parties. While he could derive a certain amount of contentment simply by being in her orbit, his self-denial of a more complete (both physical and emotional) relationship was also a refusal to give Sara what she needed. The entire 4th season is quite convoluted in terms of Grissom's psyche where Sara is concerned. On the one hand, we are finally given verbal entree into the fact that he is indeed in love with Sara in Butterflied. At the same time, he truly believes he has blown his chance with her, and he distances himself from her. Yet somewhere between the end of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5 he seems to have come to a decision that she is worth the risk.

And even though we are not given privy to his epiphany in any concrete "aha" moment, his behavior towards Sara changes. It is almost as if he has finally realized that love is always a risk, and that to truly love someone is not some idealized romantic concept but a give and take between two people. While he may still believe that he is "too late" for them to have a "beautiful life" together, that doesn't mean he can't be there for her. To become emotionally available. To show her that he cares about her. To love her without reservation, and let the chips fall where they may.

There are several moments in season 5 pre ND when it seems to me that Grissom is actively wooing Sara--in his fashion. Let's face it, he really is 50 going on 15 when it comes to romance. I more than suspect that he was not the pursuer in his few sexual relationships. (Another reason the whole Teri Miller thing doesn't quite fit.) Even if you are in the camp of their having had a fully consummated relationship in SF, A La Cart tells us that, initially, it was Sara who pursued him. The difference, apparently, is that he didn't offer up much resistance. What we don't know is how far it went. Was it immediate impetuous sex and figure out the rest later, or a long slow romantic dance stopping just short of intercourse? Or some combination of both? What we do know is that the attraction was intellectual, emotional and physical. It was love at first sight.

As for Sara, she is somewhat the phoenix from the ashes in this part of the story. It's clear she came to Vegas under the assumption things would move forward with them. She has two responses when they don't, the first was to become an obsessive workaholic. Then, in an effort to get a life, she begins seeing another guy. Other than giving her a modicum of companionship and recreational sex, making her feel wanted on a superficial level, I highly doubt she got much out of dating Hank. She is absolutely obviously still in love with Grissom for the duration of that relationship. Once her distraction from her one true love ends, she decides to give it another shot with Grissom, but her timing couldn't be worse. While there is some indication she realized something was wrong with his hearing, it's clear that she is unaware of the seriousness of the situation. The irony of the scene in Play With Fire is that the 2 threats Grissom perceived to his career are intermingled within seconds: his potential loss of hearing and the girl he loves.

I've mentioned before that watching Sara spiral downward in season 4 is hard to watch. It must have seemed to her that she was thwarted at every turn...by Gil Grissom. The very bright are at an emotional disadvantage when it comes to interpersonal relationships. So much comes so easily to them that when relationships can't be intellectually analyzed into working out they feel as if they are utter failures. Clearly, Sara is fighting feelings of worthlessness throughout the season. Okay, the guy rejected me. I'll put my head down and concentrate on my work. Omigod the guy does have feelings for me, but they weren't strong enough for him to take a chance with me. Omigod, now I'm not even good enough for a promotion, despite my exemplary record and workaholic work ethic. It's more nuanced than that, especially in Jorja's portrayal.

Hitting rock bottom with the DUI was a wake up call for Sara. Ironically, it seems that while seeing Sara broken and humiliated was a strong impetus for Grissom to revisit his interactions with her, it also seems that it caused Sara to reevaluate her relationship with Grissom vis-a-vis what she was hoping to get out of her job. On some level, her entire time in Vegas has been an attempt to use her working for him as a way to woo him: Seeking "validation in inappropriate places." It is her most mature recognition. She is no longer angling to be his “star pupil” in an effort to win his love. Yes, she came to Vegas for Grissom. Yes, she's still in love with him, but she can't make him love her on her terms; still, she can't let all of that infuse their working relationship. It is almost as if she has accepted the same terms for their relationship as the one he has been living: to be completely in love with someone, knowing it will never be more than it is, and enjoying what there is instead of longing for what can’t be.

Ironically, it is perhaps in the very moment that she tells him that she recognizes that which ultimately gets her her man. I think she stuns him twice in Snakes, first by more or less telling him she was still in love with him, and then by walking away before he can respond to her. In many ways, it's an incredibly frustrating scene. Once again she puts herself out there, and, again, he blows it. He can't say what he wants to say, and, once more, it seems as if they are destined to dance around their love for one another. But there is a difference. This time he doesn't reject her. While he clearly cannot find the words, the scene reopens up all sorts of possibilities.

While I am not in the camp of their having had sex in the time gap in ND, I do believe a lot happened, quietly. I do think he stayed with her, possibly even took her to bed, chastely, holding her until she fell asleep. In other words, whatever happened between them in that interim was incredibly intimate from an emotional standpoint. She bared her soul to him, and he stayed. It's always been my gut feeling that her making herself so vulnerable to him is what enabled him, finally, to make himself vulnerable to her.

The thing these two characters have in common is that they really don't want people to know them. They both have secrets, and they develop parallel but different modes of self-protection, although both use intellectually as a prop in their methodology. Grissom tells Cassie James in The Hunger Artist that "Looking for things, analyzing them... trying to figure out the world--that's a life." He shields himself with the "shell around his heart." When, suddenly, he has this cornucopia of feelings, which include sexual desire, for this young woman, he doesn't know how to deal with it. She makes him vulnerable because she makes him feel. His only self-protection is self-denial: he cannot let himself love this girl because he could lose himself in the love of her. As long as he keeps her at arm's length, she cannot reject him: if he never has her, he can never lose her.

When Grissom tells Heather he learned to love someone, I think he was speaking specifically to the moment he decided that loving Sara was not just about recognizing that he loved her but the realization that love was about taking risks, not in terms of his job but in terms of making himself vulnerable to her. Showing her he cared about her, wanting to be with her in an all-encompassing romantic relationship. By choosing to get involved with her, even if he never said it directly, he was telling her she was worth the risk, not only to his career but to everything he had carefully crafted in his psyche to keep himself safe from emotion, from the potential heartbreak of love.

My read on when and how they got together is pretty eccentric in the head canon world. For one, I think it happened much more quickly after ND than most folks, at least the sexual part of it, nor do I think it just happened. I think Grissom decided it was "now or never." That he found himself at her door on some Sunday morning or afternoon to see what would happen, because, finally, he was ready to throw caution to the wind, to take a chance. To allow himself to love.

I confess that the first time I saw ND I was convinced they made love in the time gap, especially given the double entendre in Grissom's defiant speech to Ecklie. Not to mention his flushed appearance. The problem is that I think Grissom would have seen it as taking advantage of her vulnerability. On the other hand, it makes no sense to me that after she returned from her suspension that he would wait until after the terror of either Committed or Grave Danger. I think the cumulative effect of Snakes and ND was more than enough to make him seize the day.

I realize the most popular reads are that either almost losing Sara in Committed or Nick in GD is what made him realize life is short, so he shouldn't waste any more time. I prefer internally vs externally driven epiphanies. IOW I prefer believing that whenever they got together that it had more to do with Grissom's emotional evolution than by some external traumatic event. It also seems to be a little too cliched a plot device, as well as somehow selling the character short. Maybe I’ve seen too many soaps where the big sweeps tragedy is what causes people to “find” each other. ND is sort of a traumatic event, but it is more of a recounting of one, and it represents an incredible turning point between them. Short version is that it is all about trust and emotional intimacy.

I suppose the other thing is that after ND if he were to go back into romantic Hamlet mode that he may actually have made the same mistake all over again. That, no matter how comforting he may have seemed during her confession, he might have given her the impression that he was again pulling back from her: that nothing had changed. And I just cannot believe at that moment in time he was going to let that happen. Lest we forget, he had already thought he'd lost her twice: when he found out about Hank and when he had rejected her in PWF.

I suspect ND made him know that he wanted to take care of her, but I don't mean in the traditional man taking care of woman way, but more in terms of meeting her emotional needs. Showing her that he loved her, by wanting to be with her, no matter the risks to career, to self. By trusting her as she trusted him. Sex can have all sorts of metaphoric implications, but, as Grissom himself says, it is an opportunity for human connection. For a man as verbally inept as Grissom (when it comes to feelings), as well as one who believes in the inexorable link between love and sex, entering into a sexual relationship with Sara was doubtless to him his way to tell her he loved her.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't think these two ever discussed their past relationships with each other. For both of them, none of them mattered, certainly not in comparison to what they felt for each other. Sara seemed to be under the impression that, like every other man, Grissom had sexual "needs," not necessarily relationships, but sex. Hence her surprise that he'd never paid for sex, despite living in Vegas for so long. Ironically, the fact that she seems to have had no idea before Ending Happy that his sexual selectivity was so narrow also may have contributed to her insecurities in their affair. While we are never given a time frame for when he decided that sex without love was pointless, there is strong evidence, even in parts of Season 1, that it was well before he ever met Sara.

I do think Grissom's atypical sexuality is tough for people to wrap their heads around, especially as a lead male character in a TV show. A lot of folks seem to think of course he would have sex with Catherine or Heather or Sofia if the opportunity presented itself. The way I see Grissom is that of course he wouldn't. With the exception of Sara, whom he loves romantically, when Grissom loves a woman (Heather, Catherine), he values the relationship as is, and it's all that he needs from it. For him, I think, to have sex with a woman he loves Platonically would in fact ruin that relationship. It would add an element he neither needed nor wanted, and he would feel that the particular bond would be altered, even destroyed.

The problem for Grissom is that what he felt for Sara terrified him. He had such a well-ordered life before the girl with the ponytail walked into his lecture. He didn't need close personal relationships; he didn't need sex. He had work and science and problem solving. He had his "students." And, boom, at 41, he's suddenly like a teenager in love. He thinks about her, he dreams about her, he feels love, experiences desire. He is out of his element. The sum total of his confusion is succinctly summed up when he tells her he doesn't know what to do about "this." And that "this" is the whole ball of everything Sara Sidle makes him feel. The stuff poets wrote about. The stuff he thought he'd never have, the stuff he couldn't even conceive he could ever even want. He wants it so much it paralyzes him. He cannot step over the line. And in that moment he is sure he has lost her forever.

And then he is given another chance, not because he has gotten down on his knees and begged her for one but because, after everything, after every attempt to distance himself from her so they could both move on, she is still there. After all the years of permutations and rejection and hurt, they are still in love. For not one moment since the day she walked into his lecture have they not been in love.

In Leave Out all the Rest, Sara says she “thought we could survive anything.” By the time they get together in Vegas, they have already survived a lot. They have intentionally and unintentionally hurt and rejected each other. She has tried to get a “life” completely devoid of him, and he has done his best to distance himself from her, despite his being drawn to her “like a moth to a flame.” Yet, despite all of this, the love they feel for one another has only deepened. They are, emotionally, already a couple, and they probably always have been, even if they didn’t know it.

All of which brings me back to the evolution of Gil and Sara as an actual couple. While I think they consummated their relationship within a short period after ND, (or reconsummated it if they had sex in SF), it's not that I think they fell into some sort of fully formed relationship. Hell, these two are babes in the woods when it comes to love and romance. I suspect they began a sexual relationship without taking the time to define what exactly it was, other than the fact that they both realized nobody could know about it. I doubt, initially, they discussed much having to do either with the depth of their feelings or where they hoped the relationship would go. Instead, it was probably primarily physical, although they may have begun to spend more and more time together, one or the other occasionally "sleeping over," or even sharing a meal or watching a movie together. (Ironically, if they did have a sexual encounter(s) in SF, I think a large part of the confusion in Vegas was probably because they never discussed feelings, fidelity, or a future. Despite the depth of what each felt, they probably both would have played it as casual.)

My read is that there was a significant turning point due to the events in Committed. There is no doubt Grissom was shaken when Adam Trent held the shard to her neck. He must have meditated on the potential cruel irony that almost was: after years of denying himself being with Sara that in an instant he almost lost her, irrevocably. While I doubt he dashed to her place and declared his overwhelming love to her, I certainly think it possible he said something along the lines of not being able to bear losing her, or, perhaps, if something had happened to her, he would miss her for the rest of his life. It was perhaps at that point they moved to the next level, with at least a tacit acknowledgement that they were, in fact, a couple and wanted more out of the relationship than sex. (It might be too neat of a play on words if the events of this episode caused them to admit they were in a "committed" relationship.)

To me the silly scene in Grave Danger between them is so telling. They are so open, relaxed with each other. They are intimate. The entire scene comes across as if they are in their own private bubble in the middle of the lab. One of the more fascinating and consistent narrative techniques employed by CSI with GSR is oppositional analogy. (An example is in Swap Meet, wherein we are told both Sara and Grissom are naturally monogamous within the context of wife swapping.) In Grave Danger, we see Grissom acting completely and unabashedly like an excited little kid with Sara. The sweet irony to me is that he has grown up. He has taken down the walls between them. He has let her in. And, suddenly, she seems not his eager student but more akin to a patient, adoring wife.

The beauty of GSR is that these are two convoluted, emotionally damaged people who get each other, the good and the bad, and love each other anyway. It is unconditional love. And it is selfless, often too much so. They want each other to be happy. The sad undercurrent is that, at times, each loses sight of the fact that each is the other's key to happiness. When rifts develop, it is not because of the faults they see in each other but because of those each sees in themselves.

#csi #csi: las vegas #gil grissom #sara sidle #sara x grissom #gsr #long post #mytext

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leahazel · 3 years

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More about my morally-grey heroines and their messed-up relationships

I wanted to elaborate on this post I wrote about D&F and BFS, but it turns out that adding readmore links to reblogs is a PITA, and I just now that this is gonna turn into a fucking novelette.

So here we go.

Time to go into some detail about this!

Let’s define our terms:

“Decline and Fall” is my 120K+ series of loosely chronological, interconnected short fics, set in a tiny fandom for a visual novel that’s been in alpha development since 2015. For the record, the word count disincludes unfinished drafts, and stories that I’m holding back because they’re based on canon spoilers.

“Blood from Stone“ is my 100K unfinished Skyrim WIP, which began as a response to a kink meme prompt, and is not so much a rarepair as a non-existent one.

Both of these stories centrally feature young female protagonists and their sexual relationship with a much older man. Both heroines are... “grey” to say the least.

Let’s compare our fandoms, shall we?

Skyrim is a juggernaut fandom for a super-popular RPG which is part of a 30-yo franchise. The setting is moderately dark and casually sprinkled with murder cults, cannibalism, secret police death squads, and the prison industrial complex. The player character can be a thief and a murderer and everyone just learns to be okay with it because the only alternative is a fiery apocalypse. They also rob graves for the lulz.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem is a pinkie-toe-sized fandom for a hybrid RPG and dating sim where attractive young people flirt and date for the purpose of brokering world peace. The setting is one where you can actually broker world peace effectively. The player character can perpetrate a fair amount of proxy violence, but maintaining a good reputation dishonestly is legitimately difficult.

Now, let’s compare our heroines:

Corinne is a 24-year-old bounty hunter who became a folk hero, a soldier, and a cult assassin. She’s living alone and working for a living since she was 18. She’s never been in love, but she’s had multiple sexual and romantic relationships in the past. I deliberately wrote her as being very sexually confident and self-assured. She also has combat training, magical training, her special Dragonborn powers, and an incalculable amount of social clout. By every metric, she’s a powerful character. Though she can talk her way out of a tight spot (all my favorite characters can), she can also fight her way out.

Verity is (at the beginning of D&F) not yet 18 years old. She’s a princess from a very conservative kingdom who was raised to become a barter bride in a diplomatic marriage. The values that were passed to her were duty, tradition, and absolute obedience. Her primary skills are social, charisma, eloquence, and persuasion. Then she was dropped into the deep water of a diplomatic summit and had the weight of future history put on her shoulders, without ever having been taught how to make her own decisions or live with her regret.

To sum up, we have one hyper-competent, confident, and independent badass, universally recognized as powerful and dangerous, and then we have someone who’s basically a deconstruction of a traditional fantasy princess.

Okay, what about the more specific setting within the game world?

BFS is set in Markarth, arguably the most corrupt city in Skyrim, and the site of a localized war, on top of the 2-3 other wars that Skyrim has going on. The city is controlled by the cartel-like Silver-Blood family, and their enemies are swiftly and brutally eliminated. The rule of law is a joke. When the player character arrives at Markarth, they witness a chain or murders and are drawn into a conspiracy that sees them sentenced to life in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. The ruling elite suppress the native underclass by a variety of inventive methods. The roads into the city are controlled by the remnants of a violent but failed uprising, and this uprising is actually the origin story of Skyrim’s entire civil war storyline.

D&F is set in Revaire, explicitly the most violently war-torn of the seven kingdoms. Once the epicenter of a conquering empire, it was a country full of arts and culture, until a bloody coup slaughtered the entire royal line and instituted a new and more brutal regime. The new regime is on shaky grounds and foresighted people predict its imminent fall to rebel forces. So much, so canon. In D&F, I made a point of developing the new royals and their small coterie of supporters, as well as illustrating their constant struggle to conceal how widely reviled they are by the populace, and most of the former nobility. Their apathy to the plight of the common people is underscored in contrast to Verity’s compassion, which is ridiculed as a sentimental feminine affectation.

I’m attracted to certain themes, as you might have noticed.

Now, we get to talk about love interests.

Thongvor Silver-Blood is rather anemically characterized in Skyrim’s canon, so much of the information that I include in BFS is inferred. From his limited number of dialogues in the game, we know that he’s politically ambitious, a Stormcloak supporter, easily angered, and that he has one legitimate friend in the city. Like most Skyrim characters of his age bracket, he served in the Great War. He’s defined by his relationship to his generational cohort. In BFS, he’s def8ined in contrast to his brother. Thonar is comfortable being thought of as a villain. Thongvor still needs to believe that he’s the good guy. And I’m gonna get more into that in later chapters, too.

As a love interest, he’s initially in awe of Corinne, and always genuinely adoring, but more than a little jealous and possessive. BFS is not a story about love redeeming bad men (don’t get me started), but Thongvor shows different sides of his personality to different people, and the side that Corinne gets to see is much nicer than what most people do.

Hyperion Asper is a character of my own devising, whose existence in 7KPP canon is purely implied. We know his children, Jarrod and Gisette, and we knew that he organized a coup to seize the throne. I posit him as a tyrant and unrepentant child-killer (not directly stated in D&F, at least not yet). He’s ruthless and manipulative and his sole purpose is maintaining a sense of personal power. I structured him as the bad example that Jarrod tries -- and fails -- to live up to.

As a love interest... look, he’s a man who’s cheating on his wife with his son’s wife. He seduces Verity and manipulates her, and takes a special delight in pushing her buttons. All his compliments to her are mean-spirited and back-handed. He’s also jealous and possessive... which is especially pathetic, since he’s jealous of his own son, whom Verity doesn’t even like. His rage is a constant implied undercurrent in the narrative.

And the relationship dynamics themselves?

Corinne kisses Thongvor, proposes marriage to him, and then sleeps with him before riding off into mortal danger. She’s fond and affectionate, but she shies away from intense emotions, whether negative or positive. Since they spend most of their time apart, their marriage has been defined by Thongvor yearning like a sailor’s wife, while Corinne ran around doing violence and crime. They only just had their first fight. It will change when they get to spend some more significant time together... but on the whole, their marriage is fairly happy, and the emotional dynamic favors Corinne -- so far. It’s not a pure gender reversal, but that element is definitely dominant.

Hyperion starts seducing Verity on their very first meeting, and relies on a combination of magnetic attraction and Verity’s inexperience in life to keep her coming back, against her better judgment. Their relationship is mutually defined by a combination of attraction and resentment of that attraction. The danger of the situation is an essential element, to the point where it’s hard to imagine their affair would survive without it. It’s a puzzle and a battle, a source of fascination but not of comfort. There’s lust involved, and curiosity, but not a shred of love or even like. The closest thing to genuine affection is when Verity briefly imagines that there could be a version of Hyperion she actually liked, cobbled from his various, hidden good qualities. Any trappings of a genuine relationship are deliberately discordant.

I have tried, more than once, to imagine an alternate universe in which these two could be happy. It can’t be done. they are a study in dysfunction.

So where’s the similarity, with all these differences outlined?

Corinne’s choice to marry into the Silver-Blood family makes her complicit in their rule of the Reach, corrupt and reactionary as it is. Her reluctance to accept being called by their name reflects a reluctance to confront unpleasant truths that’s fundamental to her character. Choosing to be one of them affects and will continue to affect how other people see her, mostly negatively, and mostly without her being aware of it. Being Thongvor’s wife has gained her enemies. The fact that she doesn’t share his more reactionary views is something that they’ve both chosen to elegantly ignore, but the rest of the world won’t be so generous.

Verity’s choice to marry into the Revaire royal family makes her complicit in their violence against the forces rebelling against them, albeit in a more subtle way. Her personal dislike of Jarrod and the fact that their marriage was purely political will not absolve her in anyone’s eyes. Neither will her compassionate and charitable character, which can only be seen as a fig leaf to the Revaire royals’ general brutality. She has lost at least one good friend -- who will never see her the same way, since she chose to throw her lot in with his enemies. She will go down in history as an Asper wife -- but if she’s lucky, not just as that.

Both Corinne and Verity choose to accept some of the violence of the system that they live under, in order to serve their own lofty, long-term goals. Both of them are more image-driven than they care to admit, and though they are genuinely caring and compassionate, they will readily sacrifice compassion in service on their goals. They are queens (or queen-like figures), one-degree-of-separation members of the ruling class, implicated but not directly in control.

And their relationships serve to highlight what they are willing to accept, even though it goes against their conscience.

Is there a conclusion to be drawn here?

Sort of. I want to write about power, compromise and complicity. For whatever reason, it turns out that yw/om relationships are... a really good vehicle for exploring that. I can’t really explain why that is, just yet. I just... have had these thoughts floating, unstructured, in my head for months on end. I needed to get them out on paper, and give them some semblance of order.

I don’t even know why anyone but me would read this, as long and meandering as it is. But having it accessible might be of use to me.

#blood from stone #decline and fall #train wreck verity #i don't know why anyone would read this #it's nearly 2k words #and it has no real conclusion #hazel's d&f/bfs meta spiel

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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I want to talk about the rumour of Kraven being from Wakanda.

Now I hope in the past I’ve been very clear about my stance when it comes to casting actors of different races, ethnicities, etc from their comic book counterparts.

To repeat myself I think it’s fine so long as the character in question doesn’t demand to be of any particular race or ethnicity (for the sake of argument let’s discount being an American/New Yorker) and the actor is a good choice for the role. As a follow up I do fundamentally disagree with actively seeking out to racebend characters 99% of the time, it should simply be that every actor who would be a good fit, regardless of their race and so on, should be looked at and then the best person for the job hired.

This then brings us to Kraven and for what I am about to say let’s presume for a moment the rumours are true.

For Kraven casting a black actor in the role is rather dependent upon what direction they are going to adopt for the character.

In a sense there are two Kravens from the 616 universe. I’m going to refer to them as pre and post KLH Kraven. Pre-KLH Kraven, as the name would imply, is Kraven as he was typically portrayed prior to Kraven’s Last Hunt and post-KLH Kraven is how he was portrayed during and after that story, which would include not just stories where he was alive but also flashback stories, appearances as a ghost or vision and also his metaphorical ‘ghost’, e.g. how characters talked about him after he died.

Whilst neither version was portrayed exactly the same way in every story, more often than not they had a consistency to them.

Pre-KLH Kraven was really nothing more than a B or C list villain who’s gimmick was simply being a jungle themed big game hunter who was a take upon the classic ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ archetypical antagonist.

And he was a jobber. Really his shining moment was in ASM #47, a story remembered more for it’s supporting cast drama and Romita artwork than for it’s super villain plot, but the latter (and thus the super villain in question) became memorable via association. It was also a time when Kraven scored essentially an unmitigated victory against Spider-Man but got his comeuppance shortly thereafter. Really Kraven’s role might’ve been played by almost any villain and amounted to practically the same thing.

In truth he was something of a joke character no one took seriously as a threat and was a villain few people, if anyone, particularly liked.

Post-KLH Kraven though is a different story altogether. The unimpressive reputation of pre-KLH Kraven helped to fuel the success of this iteration as in Kraven’s Last Hunt a villain considered a joke suddenly became deadly dangerous and effective. It wasn’t just in terms of the physical threat he posed though or even his deranged plan. Kraven’s personality got a makeover. Instead of overwriting what we’d known of him before J.M. DeMatteis expanded upon what we knew about Kraven and constructed a truly complex and nuanced character, who’s motivations and actions were understandable even as they were clearly deranged and insane.

Across just six issues (arguably just one even) Kraven the Hunter’s reputation was totally hanged. He became a contender amongst Spider-Man’s most effective and formidable foes and to many a fan favourite. This reputation was further fuelled by the legacy of Kraven’s Last Hunt consequently leading to further mentions and appeareces of Kraven usually being reframed through the lens of his more complex and darker Kraven’s Last Hunt characterization. This was even the case with the Chameleon, a character strongly associated with Kraven who was used in a very ambitious revenge scheme upon Spider-Man motivated by Kraven’s death, and used his ‘ghost’ as a weapon against Spider-Man. In the story Chameleon received his own share of character development as his backstory was revealed as inherently linked with Kraven.

The key to DeMatteis’ decision to use Kraven, to understanding the character and to developing him (and by extension the Chameleon) was the fact that he was Russian. DeMatteis was a fan of Russian literature and connected with it a lot so it was through that lens he expanded Kraven’s character. Rather than being a big game hunter who happened to be of Russian descent*DeMatteis revealed Kraven was a Russian aristocrat who’s lose of his home, wealth and ultimately his family in the 1917 Russian Revolution was the key to his embracing of a more primal lifestyle in the animal kingdom and his obsession with Spider-Man.**

The Russian influence was so important that on occasion Kraven’s name would at times be stylized with Russian alphabet characters.

In other words post-KLH Kraven is the more popular and dramatically compelling rendition of the character and his Russian origins are integral to that.

You likely see my point in all this.

If the MCU adopts the pre-KLH rendition of Kraven casting a black actor won’t really be a problem as his ethnicity is mostly irrelevant to the character.

However if they MCU adopts the post-KLH Kraven then casting a black actor would be a problem as his Russian aristocratic heritage is inherently vital to who this rendition of Kraven is; and unless I am very much mistaken there were no black Russian aristocrats.***

The question then becomes which version should the MCU adopt.

And frankly the answer should be pretty obvious. Even if you wouldn’t commit to a Kraven’s Last Hunt story specifically the post-KLH rendition of Kraven informed by his Russian heritage has proven itself inherently more dramatically compelling and effective. Pre-KLH Kraven is really just a gimmick villain with little substance, making him a Wakandan might improve upon that to an extent but why bother when the comics already have a more compelling version of the character to drawn from. Making him a Wakandan also perpetuates a systemic issue with MCU Spider-Man, that his corner of the MCU is dictated more by the wider MCU than...well...Spider-Man himself.

If you examine most of the Phase 1 movies, or in fact most of the MCU origin films you will see that most everything in them is built around and flows from the central character. Captain America the First Avenger might use Asgardian technology as a plot device, but fundamentally the movie revolves around Steve Rogers and everything is first and foremost connected to him. Same thing with Thor 2011 and Iron Man 2008 and Doctor Strange 2016.

The Spider-Man films have been this weird exception to the rule as Spider-Man himself and his world has to a very large extent revolved around other characters or the wider MCU, typically Iron Man or Iron Man associated elements. Case in point both of his villains’ have been designed as dark reflections of Iron Man and their motivates stemming from him, their ultimate plan revolving around the acquiring of his technology. If MCU Kraven is a Wakandan and uses Wakandan technology, and presumably will be motivated due to factors connected to Wakanda, we might be not be usuing Iron Man elements but the underlying problem would remain the same.

It’s Spider-Man’s characters and Spider-Man’s world essentially filtered through the lens of the MCU rather than organically integrated within the MCU. It is allowing the MCU to lead and dictate the character and his world rather than reconciling the creative integrity of the latter within the pre-established world of the MCU.

*A fact likely established either because the Chameleon was Russian recruited Kraven and/or in the 1960s Russian was shorthand for villain.

**I should also note that DeMatteis explained that the source of Kraven’s powers alter retarded his aging hence he could look so young in spite of being born before 1917. This was revealed alongside the fact his origins date back to 1917.

***I’d also add that his dynamic with the Chameleon, already established in the MCU with an Eastern European flavour, (though his skillset means you need not be constrained by that) would be inherently different (and inherently lesser frankly) if he is neither Kraven’s brother nor his lower class punching bag. So far in the MCU (and Black Panther fans will need to tell me if this is also true in the comics) apart from the royal family there doesn’t seem to be a class system in Wakanda wherein there is anything akin to an aristocracy. One might even argue the lack of one would fit with the notion of it being so advanced.

#spider-man #Kraven the Hunter #sergei kravinoff #Peter Parker #J.M. DeMatteis #Iron Man #Tony Stark #mcu #marvel cinematic universe

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misscrawfords · 4 years

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7 and 8!

7. Are most of your ships “pure” or “problematic”?

Congratulations, you got me on a pet peeve! What is up with things being “pure” or “problematic”? Is it this stupid American puritanical culture thing that is taking over everywhere? I refuse to categorise my interests like this.

Calling a ship “pure” is nonsensical. Does it mean literally virginal with not a whiff of that naughty sexual chemistry? Because sex is bad, guys! Is that it?

Or does it mean that the characters have no flaws and never hurt each other or do anything wrong ever in themselves or their relationships? Because that’s… not very realistic. Has the person advocating this ever, you know, had a relationship of any kind with anyone ever? Also, why would anyone be interested in something so excruciatingly dull as flawless people being virtuous and happy and successful all the time?

Do people ship things for Christian moral validation or something? Because that is weird.

Or perhaps a “pure” ship is simply one that is not “problematic”. Because people who ship “problematic” ships are evil and support abuse in fiction AND real life and so a person who ships a “pure” ship can feel morally superior to someone who ships something “problematic” and we do all love feeling morally virtuous and superior, don’t we?

But what is a “problematic” ship? Does it mean a ship involving incest or paedophilia or rape or something equally unpalatable to many people? Well, perhaps. Certainly incest is quite popular at the moment thanks to GoT but hey, in various cultures incest has always been a thing. And what counts as incest anyway? Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park are first cousins which squicks out some people and not others. I guess Oedipus/Jocasta is a genuinely problematic ship… And there are certainly some ships that involve actual rape. YMMV when it comes to varying levels of sexual coercion and what is something that can be rectified within the text and what is a line that cannot be crossed. But surely that’s a matter for individual taste and there isn’t an actual rule about it. Astonishingly, the real police don’t care whether you ship Spuffy or not. And surely it also depends on your definition of shipping. Is a ship something you aspire to in your own personal relationships? Or is it a dynamic you find interesting and compelling for some reason? People have lots and lots of reasons for why they ship something.

Shipping doesn’t mean condoning the relationship or the characters involved in it.

But the majority of ships that are so-called “problematic” that I’ve seen aren’t even a rape fantasy of paedophilic incest. They’re just ships between people who aren’t always very nice… people who do bad things… or treat other people badly sometimes… And what constitutes “bad” or “not nice” varies greatly depending on the fandom. In epic fantasy, murdering 50 people might just be all in a day’s work, but in a high school AU is a bit more difficult to justify. Equally, in a high school AU cheating in an exam and punching the quarterback might be absolutely scandalous bad boy behaviour but would make the epic fantasy mercenary confused that this is supposed to be the pinnacle of evil.

Two things stand out.

Firstly, that fiction is interesting when people make mistakes. Most human beings do at some point. Fiction allows us an opportunity to explore the darker aspects of human nature in a safe and often non-judgemental way. I don’t know why people would be surprised by this or condemn it. This is literally what fiction is about. Go read some Greek epic or tragedy. So it’s hardly surprising that many people are drawn to ships that contain elements that are dark or difficult or not admirable either in the characters themselves or in the representation of their relationship. I mean, go read The Aeneid. Or Wuthering Heights. Dido and Aeneas - so respectful, such great communication, such excellent role-models! Heathcliffe and Cathy - so healthy, so virtuous! This is… not exactly a new phenomenon, ya know?

Secondly, people are jumping on literally anything! I got anon hate for shipping Richard/Mary because Richard kissing her at Haxby was “sexual assault”. I’m just… Stop trivialising real world assault by slapping it unthinkingly onto fiction! Was Mary happy that her actual fiance in 1918 kissed her when she didn’t love him and their power dynamic was screwed up? Yes, almost certainly. But there’s something really bothersome about misusing these terms in this way. It divorces circumstances from context and context is really bloody important! Different countries, different cultures, different periods of history, different fictional universes have different cultural norms and not all of them can be described helpfully using the vocabulary and value systems of the 21st century “liberal” USA. It becomes like the boy who cried wolf. If everything becomes “abuse” or “assault” then I worry that the nuances that do exist in real relationships will get lost.

That doesn’t mean, incidentally, that these things should be brushed over in the name of shipping. I certainly don’t intend to trivialise real world problems in real life. Or to suggest that people’s individual reasons for particular ships not appealing to them on a personal level aren’t valid. Everyone has their squicks and their NOTPs.

But I don’t think, most of the time, that shippers do trivialise the bad things that characters do in their ships. The most intelligent discussions of relationships and characters that I’ve come across have been from shippers of��“problematic” pairings who don’t shy away from the challenging aspects of those relationships. The best fanfictions are the ones that engage with them on a far, far deeper level usually than the original source, teasing open every flaw and red light and giving characters depth and development that they are often denied in canon.

You can do a lot in a 200,000 word fanfiction written by an intelligent, self-aware young woman that you’re not going to get for a secondary character in a TV show written by a middle-aged man.

Finally, it seems that this dichotomy between “pure” and “problematic” ships has arisen very recently and it’s all being pushed by the “pure” shippers, who have a real problem with what other people ship. Whereas the people who ship these “problematic” ships really don’t care what other people ship and often love those characters and relationships too.

When I was a teenager I was mainly a Harry/Hermione shipper but I also read plenty of Dramione fic and even Snape/Hermione fic (mainly because a friend recommended me some awesome fic for that ship) and nobody judged at all. Shipping wars have always been a thing but there was never any kind of moral judgement, at least not that I can recall. Canon or non-canon, healthy or deeply messed up… it was all just shipping, you know? And nobody was trying to claim that the fact I spent a weekend reading a NC-17 rated Snape/Hermione teacher/student dubcon fic at the age of 15 made me a terrible person who supported abusive relationships… It doesn’t, of course. (Though, looking back, I do wonder a little at my RL friend who told me I should read that fic. I mean…) Just as the fact that I think Medea is awesome doesn’t mean I think killing one’s children is a great idea.

But these days, it seems to me that a lot of people who advocate for “pure” ships are the biggest bullies in fandom and the least capable of a nuanced reading of fiction and the most judgemental both of fictional characters and of the people who think differently to them.

And again I’m forced to return to comparisons with a certain kind of puritanical, dogmatical Christianity which preaches peace and love while being deeply bigoted and narrow-minded. So much for being “liberal” and “caring”.

So, to conclude, I guess most of my ships are problematic. In that I like exploring relationships that have a bit of bite to them. Not that I get off on incredibly squicky things. And I like seeing what happens when the least likely people discover common ground and come together in whatever way. It’s fun! So then I can put them in a coffee shop AU where nothing bad ever happens. :P

But I would rather just destroy this entire concept of “pure” and “problematic” ships. I think it is deeply, deeply toxic and expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of what fiction is about.

8. Who is the most shippable person you can think of?

Mary Crawley lbr. I ship her with:

Matthew

Richard

Charles

Mabel

Tom

#wow #i really went off on one #but it honestly really bothers me #this whole shipping thing #it is so wrong!#do people not know how fiction works?#and i am so sick of people being judged #not me specifically because i'm not important enough in any fandom #but for goodness #shipping has literally nothing to do with morality #so this rant is long overdue #can we PLEASE retire this terminology?#well i had fun with the gifs anyway

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filmista · 5 years

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Lost In Translation (2003)

“You’re probably just having a midlife crisis. Did you buy a Porsche yet?”

Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola’s second feature film seems to prove that talent does perhaps lie in the genes to some degree, after all, her attempt at acting with her father directing her, proved unsuccessful and earned her a Razzie.

It was just like her father with directing that she would find her way in life, her passion and she probably certainly picked up some elements from her father’s filming style.

I think that’s only normal when you literally grow up in that world, for instance when her father made Apocalypse Now she was taken along with her dad and her mom. So ever since she was a little girl she has seen her father behind the camera, of course, that was going to have an influence on her.

Her first ever film was The Virgin Suicides, which I think is a good adaptation of the book with the same name, and while some consider it her masterpiece, for me up until now and according to many others as well that’s Lost In Translation.

Lost In Translation is one of my all-time favorite films and one of those films that I can keep on revisiting time after time I think I’ve seen it about eight times by now, not sure exactly, definitely many times.

It’s one of those films that makes me calm when I’m watching it, I can watch it when I’m really agitated and I’ll be calm after just a few minutes of watching the film…

I find that there’s something soothing and comforting in the familiarity of the emotions and the feelings of the two main characters. There’s something universal about the things they feel, most of us have felt like at least either one of the characters at least once in our lives.

Visually Coppola is calm, there’s great attention to the aesthetic of the environment and Coppola shows us her two characters and their dynamic naturally so that when we feel like we know them, they really almost have become real people and it really, actually almost hurts to say goodbye to them.

While Coppola takes her time, and while at first sight not really that much seems to happen at all, there’s really many different subjects and the human emotions attached to them explored. While Sofia’s father Francis Ford Coppola, is sometimes poetic in the brutality in his films; he makes violent stuff look extremely beautiful and pleasing to the eyes.

She, on the other hand, is sometimes brutal, in the calmness of which she shows us certain emotional states with such spot on, merciless precision. In a way succeeds in making you feel like her characters, or getting that certain emotion, that you already had in you out of you.

Lost in Translation for me at least, is a film that can make you feel utterly alone even if you may be watching it with an entire classroom. Because it painfully confronts with the fact that few people really truly care about us and know us, and that certain subjects are really truly explored best with strangers, who for a particular moment in time, might connect with us deeply, perhaps better than anyone has before…

So while Lost In Translation seems to be about not all that much at first glance, it treats relationships, difficulties in marriage, or feeling alone next to your partner, your friends even your family. Feeling completely alone in the world even when you are next to people because you can’t really talk about what really matters to you, or fully share the things that occupy your mind the most.

Or being tired of the repetitiveness that may inevitably to some degree come with certain things in your life like your profession, or on the contrary being young, inexperienced when it comes to certain things, and feeling hopeless and scared.

Because you don’t yet know how It’s all going to work, and you fear that it might not even work at all, and being awake and unable to sleep at night because It’s all mulling around in your head, driving you insane…

Now, in this case, all this angst, insomnia and loneliness, are felt by two Americans, (but they could literally be from any country) a middle-aged actor who’s very likely experiencing a middle life crisis, and a young woman.

That doesn’t fully know what she wants to be and how she should live her life, she is somewhat impulsive and has tried her hand at numerous things, and now slowly comes to realize she may have married the wrong man.

That he doesn’t really know her, or even sees or cares about what goes on in her mind, and that he probably won’t ever do so, she has a deep depression; her husband can’t even tell his wife is suffering on the inside…

He has more in common with an airhead starlet (who my intuition suspects he was having an affair with, why else wouldn’t want his wife to come with, if there’s nothing to hide?, according to him It’s because she’ll get bored) who stars in bad films and he seems to love his camera and his own ego more than her.

She’s afraid she’s never going to have a purpose, that she’s never going to find a place, her niche in the world, something that fits her and that fulfills her. She’s afraid she’s never going to amount to anything, and that she’s never going to be fully loved, that no one is ever going to see and hear her.

He’s tired, afraid that It’s all been for nothing, that he’s never been much at all, and that his wife doesn’t really get him, and that he perhaps wasn’t ever fully loved, he doesn’t see the sense and the purpose in it all anymore. These two people find each other, meet and they connect, in each other, they find comfort and support.

They find someone who has tolerance, patience and who wants to listen, someone who perhaps doesn’t necessarily offer that many solutions, but who understands how the other feels completely and who won’t ever judge.

With each other they talk about all that stuff that they can’t talk about with anyone else because those people press for details, they criticize and judge, from the existing perspective that they have on them, not even always with bad intentions.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an actor who parts with ill-concealed reluctance to Tokyo to film a commercial for whiskey. In fact, he would rather be on stage, but as he would later say, “This gave me the chance to escape from my wife, miss the birthday of my child and to pocket two million dollars.”

Let’s say that Bob has become a bit cynical about his profession. But the whiskey does at least what it should do, and Bob retires at the chic hotel bar where he resides, lonely, sad and almost continuously drunk.

There, he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman who has just graduated and now does not know what to do next. She is in Tokyo with her husband, a photographer for whom she is clearly a burden, and while he goes to work, she spends, just like Bob, too much time alone.

In her room in the crazy, chaotic city that Tokyo is apparently, and in the hotel bar, where she meets Bob. The two differ thirty years in age, but together they finally find some kind of support and understanding. During the next few days, they disappear into the city together, and they talk about their life, marriage, children and all those things which you can apparently only discuss fully with strangers.

Coppola’s personal experiences color the whole film - she travels to Japan, her (notoriously) failed marriage with director Spike Jonze, her background as a photographer … From beginning to end you feel that this is a very personal project, you sense that she was in a way trying to rid herself of some of her demons.

She is not interested in telling a traditional story - she just has these two characters, who she knows through and through like they’re her own children and she wants to present them to us and share them with us. Coppola knows how to lead us into the life of Bob and Charlotte, and by the end of the ride, we know them they are our friends.

How does she do that? First, she gives the two characters time to spend alone in some scenes. We see Charlotte sitting melancholy, lonely in front of her huge, panoramic window or lying on her bed, always in a fetal position.

Hugging herself, as if to protect herself against all that is outside her room, and maybe also as a way to console herself. Because her husband won’t ever do it and won’t give her, the whole measure of affection she needs and craves and in my eyes deserves!

The last time they slept together literally seems ages ago, and they’ve unfortunately only been married two years… she tries, but she only receives a sporadical hug or a sporadical kiss once or twice a day, if he remembers or cares to do it at all.

Her husband might just as well not have been there, and when they come together with friends, we are seeing her almost out of her mind, visibly suffering from the banality of their “hip” actually painfully self-righteous, egotistical conversations. And no one sees it… Fundamentally she is alone, and Coppola gives her, especially at the beginning of the film, the time to be alone.

She needs that, otherwise, her later scenes with Bob wouldn’t have worked as well. Visually Coppola stressed that feeling by always surrounding Charlotte with vertical lines, the space in which she is located, seems to make her smaller, and gives off a claustrophobic, stifling feeling.

Bob gets more of the same, almost psychopathic of the jet-lag and sleep deprivation, he is overwhelmed and exhausted by the relentless, somewhat practiced, friendliness of everyone around him. But no one with whom he can talk. Tokyo as a city is also not very helpful for our hero and our heroine.

From the hotel rooms to the streets, the metropolis comes out here as a kind of hellish amusement park for adults, full of neon lights, where technology has swept away all sense of humanity and personality

Early scenes in the film, in which Bob is woken up at night by a fax machine, and in which he delivers a desperate fight with a shower and a training device are particularly funny - but on another level at the same time yet again very sad.

Bob arises from this as a man who could be funny and hugely charming but who doesn’t feel like it anymore, doesn’t see the sense in it anymore and Bill Murray knows precisely how to play him.

Murray is probably the only Saturday Night Live (I’ve actually never seen an episode, not that it isn’t available in the cave in which I’m living, I just never have for whatever reason, but I know Murray appeared on it ), comedian from the eighties who has prevailed in both comedic and dramatic roles and has retained his credibility. And here he is smart enough not to be overtly funny, that would have been distasteful.

That would not fit his character at all. Lost In Translation is often a genuinely hilarious film, but the humor comes precisely from the way Murray responds to the very different behavior of the Japanese in a somewhat undercooled way. A people that he does not understand, he does not understand the language and customs.

Scarlett Johansson is just as understatedly, silently powerful, at the time of filming she was only eighteen, nineteen years old, but she plays emotions and thoughts that are older than that, without losing her credibility. As a couple, the opportunity of a sexual relationship is presented right from the beginning, but no.

That obvious trap, is avoided skillfully, elegantly the whole story would have fallen dead if the two had gone to bed with each other since all the tension between the characters would have disappeared. And the tension between the characters there is it crackles between Murray and Johansson from their first to their last scene.

Especially they’re last. The farewell that they share is one of the nicest, most sincere emotional scenes I’ve seen in a film in a long time, Lost In Translation ends with a kiss and Murray’s character that whispers something in Johanson’s ear and her saying okay, then she is teary-eyed and smiling simultaneously.

We never know what he whispered, and you do not need to because we know that it was something positive, otherwise she would not smile at him would she? And they feel so real that they deserve their privacy.

The kiss they share is not intended to turn each other on sexually, no foreplay and sex will follow even though it is right in the mouth. It is a calm, friendly, kind of kiss, there’s no get your shirt and your pants off right now! the urgency to it, it is a sort of kiss between friends which literally says: I love you, thanks for everything, I will never forget you, I will miss you.

There are many people that say that what Bob and Charlotte have is an affair of the mind, an emotional affair. they can’t find emotional understanding and support with their own spouse, they don’t sleep with each other, but they get intimate in a mental way, they share the stuff with each other that’s on their minds that their spouse doesn’t have the time for.

Murray’s character at one point has a one night stand, It’s not with Charlotte, and It’s only sex, nothing more to it for him, it was to fulfill a sexual need, with Charlotte he fulfills an emotional need. Charlotte comes to know about the one night stand, and seems a little annoyed, perhaps even somewhat jealous and hurt, perhaps she in that instant wanted to be that other woman, or it could even be anger at the other woman for taking Bob away from her, even if it was only for a few hours.

To some degree there is the attraction there, otherwise, she would not have reacted the way she did:

- Charlotte: “She’s older. At least you’ll have lots to talk about…” - Bob: “I can’t believe you couldn’t find anyone else to lavish you with attention.”She then after Bob’s answer, brusquely takes the menu, almost buries her face in it, turns away from Bob and refuses to face him for a while. No woman reacts like this with a man she doesn’t give a fuck about, or perhaps she’s silently judging him for having cheated on his wife.

There’s definitely an attraction of the mind, they think and feel alike and probably to some degree physical attraction, but they respect each other too much to ever act on it.

And after a while when they get to know each other fully, the sexual tension that might have been there seemingly has dissipated, they no longer feel any need to sleep with each other, It’s about being intimate on a level that goes beyond pure physical contact.

They find an understanding with each other that they don’t have with their spouse, in a good relationship or good marriage, your partner should be able to satisfy both your bodily and your mental needs, ideally, in a perfect, beautiful utopia.

To put it like this: Good sex every now and again, a good conversation, a genuine exchange of thoughts or a nice trip to some museum or a good dinner at a restaurant. If the latter is left unsatisfied and you go to another man or woman for that is that cheating? According to some people, it is.

I think It’s the case if It’s really constantly like that… But you can’t think like that all the time, because then any really good friendship, of the kind where the two people share all that’s on their own mind, between a man and a woman can be regarded as a form of cheating.

And that would incredibly limit people in their relationships with each other and even their way of viewing the world, men and women can learn from each other, help and support each other, so if you demonize they’re being friends, only friends literally a whole world of beautiful, enriching possibilities fall away…

Through Bob Charlotte really begins to realize that she married the wrong man because in this man she finds what she’s been missing emotionally, there’s a theory that what Bob whispers to the end to Charlotte is something along the lines of:

Tell that man the truth, or you do the right thing and you tell that man the truth, meaning that she should ask him for a divorce because she feels unloved. I don’t know if he directly said that, and it doesn’t matter because indirectly he has made her realize it, and Charlotte has also made Bob realize certain things.

And maybe if there hadn’t been that 30-year difference between them, both would have divorced and ended up together, but I don’t think so. What they had was just a genuine, deep friendship that lasted for a certain time, and they both helped each other realize certain things.

As I’ve said before they don’t really offer many solutions, because both are lost in their own way, but they reassure each other. Make each other feel better and make the perspective of what’s to come lighter, bearable they have given each other a renewed mental strength because now they both know that is possible to be understood by someone else.

There’s no doubt that they love each other but It’s as friends, there’s initially a few scenes where they seem somewhat physically attracted to each other, but as time progresses, it evolves and moves past that, in a way that feels completely unforced and believable.

It is possible for a man and a woman to love each other, in a non-physical way, for instance the love that a father feels for his daughter, (if there’s certain physical stuff going on there, something’s very seriously wrong) or that a brother feels for his sister, or that a son feels for his mother, it is not the same as a couple’s love, but it is strong and it is love nonetheless….

So I find what Coppola did really interesting, she doesn’t deny the possibility of a physical attraction (because maybe that to a certain extent is always gonna exist between a man a woman, that aren’t related, that’s simple biology) It’s explored a little, subtly but the characters accept the situation as it is and naturally move past that.

They no longer feel any need to consume the love they have for each other physically and they’re perfectly comfortable in each other’s company, they can stare into each other’s face for minutes and not feel the need to move in for the kiss.

Lost in Translation is a beautiful film, in every sense of the word and in all of its aspects. It’s a film with a sensitive yet acid, quite dark humor, a humor that’s based on loneliness and confusion.

It knows how to make busyness look calm and strangely serene in an almost otherworldly way. And how to capture the sometimes overwhelming emotion, the mental busyness of calmness, of utter tranquility. Of being completely on your own, or sitting by yourself and hearing your own thoughts deafeningly loud in your head.

In its cinematography and soundtrack, it adapts to the mood of its characters with ease, reflecting the city and the places that surround the characters according to their emotional perception, often by playing with contrasts. Coppola knows how to capture both pieces of mind and feeling locked in and stuck, just with her camera, while all the way preserving a tranquil, though never tiresome pace.

One of my favorite scenes: an attempt at conversation between Murray and an old Japanese man in a waiting room of a hospital. The Japanese man is incessantly talking, Murray understands zero, but agrees calmly and nicely with everything the man says as if he spoke perfect Japanese.

In the background we see two extras choke with uncontrollable laughter, and immediately we get the impression that at the time it was not planned, that the two Japanese ladies had indeed gotten the giggles and that Coppola simply chose to keep it that scene. And rightly so, because it is a wonderful piece of spontaneous cinema.

Lost In Translation is emotional in a good way, captivating, witty, honest, intelligent, … you can still throw in a few more adjectives if you wish to but it remains without a doubt one of Sofia Coppola’s best and my personal favorite of hers.

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

#fave #lost in translation #lost in translation 2003 #lost in translation movie #lost in translation film #female director #sofia coppola #bill murray #scarlett johanson #movies #films #reviews #movie reviews #film review #movie review #movie analysis #cinema #filmista

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invertedgoogle · 5 years

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Noragami Analysis: Ebisu and Iwami; Guideposts and Familial Relationships

This post is a continuation/elaboration of my last one on Ebisu’s theme of crying, but instead of focusing on a central motif, this one branches out into more related elements in the plot. Please bear with me if some things are repeated!

We know Ebisu’s (more widely believed) origin story of him being thrown away by his parents Izanagi and Izanami because he was born without bones/arms and legs. Yet, self-destructive tendencies aside, Ebisu is a comparatively well-adjusted god in Noragami. His maturity, ability to function well as a god and overall benevolence make him an ideal role model for Yato on his journey to become a god of fortune. @echodrops has an entire essay written on how Ebisu is such a good father figure to Yato- please go check it out (along with the other essays) it’s incredible and thoroughly researched.

So how does Ebisu, himself abandoned by his birth parents, manage to become who he is in the present day?

(More under cut)

We’ve been shown instances of gods taking fatherly/motherly roles towards their shinki (Yato, Bishamon, Arahabaki) and plenty of domestic spousal relationships between gods and shinki (Kazuma and Bishamon, Kofuku and Daikoku). But we don’t usually come across the parent-child dynamic between shinki and gods (note the order), which we’ve only seen with the gods who reincarnate and are raised by shinki: Takemikazuchi and Ebisu.

It’s shown that Ebisu values (or in the very least, shows understanding of) familial kinship.

Whether he’s saying this to Izanami as his supposed ‘biological’ mother or to the Olive Ken lady he looks up to as a mother (and who Izanami takes the form of to him), it’s clear that he does long for the mother he never had growing up.

And get this: besides fishing and commerce, Ebisu is also a patron deity of expectant mothers.

He gets prayers from people who want children (unlike his own mother), and sees how happy humans can be with families. He’d want to know how it might have been if his parents hadn’t thrown him away (still, I doubt that things would have been as rosy as he may imagine- just ask Kagutsuchi).

While the previous Ebisu’s mother figure had been a human woman (who will eventually age and die), he’s had a consistent father figure throughout his incarnations: Iwami.

As turbulent Ebisu’s existence is with his high reincarnation rate, Iwami is a dependable constant for Ebisu who will never change. And some part of this dependability is what Ebisu would want from a guardian: the kind his own parents had never shown him. While Izanagi and Izanami had abandoned him, Ebisu can trust Iwami to be there to guide his next incarnations even if he dies. (inserting a bit of headcanoning here, but adult Ebisu’s bluntness really looks like he takes after Iwami)

But before I go into anything specific about the Ebisu and Iwami dynamic, let’s run through the fundamentals of the Noragami world: what gods’ natures are and what shinki/guideposts are for.

In Noragami, gods are born from human wishes: no matter how big or small. The nature of those gods then depends on that wish, and it is sculpted specifically to enable them to fulfil the wish. However, gods have no innate concept of right and wrong and are therefore “justified” in doing anything their nature dictates them to do.

This would have been disastrous for the mortal world if it were not for shinki keeping the god they serve in check. Because shinki were once human, they can guide their gods to act in ways more acceptable to humans. We can call this the “nurture” to the god’s “nature”.

A guidepost is given an additional task besides their usual duties as shinki, and it’s Ebisu himself who introduces to us to guideposts.

A guidepost's responsibility is to show their gods the way and protect their name. Well, what exactly is the way? Isn’t it a bit vague? But that’s the whole point. There are infinite ways a god can be true to their nature. If we look at Yato for instance, his recurrent urge (and perhaps nature) to “cut things up” has manifested itself in killing people for centuries under Father’s instructions.

It’s Yukine who points out that he can use this to “slice and rip chaos itself into shreds” after he consults him. He isn’t changing who Yato's nature to cut things: all he’s doing is interpreting it for him to better suit what he wants.

There are as many ways to be a guidepost as there are ways to be a god, because each guidepost interprets ‘protecting their god’s name’ differently. That’s how we go from Kazuma, who will do anything to protect Bishamon, to Kiun, who would kill Takemikazuchi to save his master’s good name. That’s why it’s important for a god to have a guidepost after their own heart: so they can be led the way they want to go (and also why having someone else choosing a god’s guidepost for them has such a serious impact).

When it comes to bringing up a god, Iwami’s certainly had much more expertise over the average guidepost/shinki. Be it trial and error over millennia or just old-age wisdom on Iwami’s part, Ebisu receives a pretty comprehensive education on being a god from Iwami.

Because we’ve seen Ebisu before and after reincarnation, we can compare the effects of his inborn “nature” and Iwami’s “nurture” on him. An example would be this (this is still a bit rickety logic-wise, but I thought it might be worth some discussion): one of adult Ebisu’s defining characteristics is his strong will that drives him to extreme lengths to make humans happy, even if it means sacrificing himself.

But from what we see from our newest Ebisu, patience... doesn’t look as “in his nature” as he says.

And if you squint, there's something interesting about Iwami’s lectures to restless, impatient teenagers:

Ebisu doesn’t seem to apply the virtue to himself (as an adult, he never does learn to tie his shoes or take care of himself, with Kunimi around) but we see this strong will reflected in his efforts to tame ayakashi. A lot of determination goes into putting himself through intense pain and eventual death just for a shot at reducing human suffering. Iwami teaches Ebisu to persevere so he won’t give up on what he wants to accomplish.

And think about a guidepost’s responsibility to nurture a god’s potential, teach them to know right and wrong, give them advice they need, especially the way it’s done for a god who is a child/young man for half the time... these duties are eerily similar to those of a parent's.

Everything Iwami does is to supplement Ebisu’s nature: equipping him with all he needs to achieve his goals. However, for how instrumental he is to Ebisu’s upbringing, a crucial duty Iwami fails to do for Ebisu is being a proper guidepost: actually giving him his purpose as a god.

Iwami’s line of thought as a guidepost is very passive: in fact, it’s so passive that the important instructions he gives to Ebisu are never from himself.

These panels sum up Iwami’s philosophy. Seeing that Iwami had been a very old man for his time when he died, he’d want someone as young and (technically) full of life as Ebisu to live his life being free to do what he wants, without interference from someone who has already lived theirs. So fearing that his words might force Ebisu down a path he wouldn’t have taken otherwise, he passes down instructions to Ebisu only if they are “as per his previous incarnation’s wishes”, which in a way ‘preserves’ Ebisu’s wish across reincarnations. He thinks of influencing Ebisu’s decisions as a sin, and only dares to support him through complementary means: behaving more as his servant than an advisor.

Despite having to keep a healthy distance to avoid appropriating a god, a guidepost’s role is still, at its core, active. In Yato’s aforementioned dilemma, it’s Yukine who thinks up of a different path when Yato is at a loss and helps him figure it out together.

It’s easier to think of guideposts as actual tour guides. While a guide who drags you astray from your intended destination isn’t helpful, neither is a guide who assumes that you’re the one who knows better. Nobody needs a guide if they already know how to get where they want to go.

Iwami’s reservedness extends to the point where he doesn’t share about himself with Ebisu even when directly prompted to:

Ebisu wants to know about who he was, what he did, and how others saw him, but he doesn’t want the answers delivered through books and journals.

He wants to hear it from others so he, in turn, can get to know them better through conversation with them.

Ebisu just wants Iwami to talk to him.

For all of his devotion to his master, why does Iwami remove himself from Ebisu like this?

His explanation to Ebisu is that he doesn’t want to change his fate, but can we suspect more to that alibi? There’s a scene in the earlier chapters where High Sentinel Oushi guilt trips Ebisu’s shinki into betraying him:

The context here refers to the physical pain of Ebisu feels when his shinki are killed, but honestly, for the most time in Ebisu’s household, who's really the one going through “the pain of a child passing on before him”?

To Iwami, every Ebisu is the little boy he’s raised from childhood (how does that tiny Chibisu up there not remind you of “dad! dad! look!”). Iwami’s there to meet Ebisu when he’s newly reincarnated; he watches him grow, then watches him die. And once Ebisu reincarnates, he can’t even remember his name.

It’s painful enough for a child to have a parent forget who they are or to have their parent pass away, but the exact opposite happens in Ebisu’s house. It’s Iwami who has his “child” forget him, who has his “child” die before he does.

And after Iwami outlives so many Ebisus, he has to raise him again and relive the nightmare. Ebisu has the ‘luxury’ (if you can call it that) of forgetting Iwami; Iwami doesn’t. The worst part is that Iwami exists to remember everything about the past Ebisu for the next one.

If Iwami keeps building close relationships with every Ebisu he serves, it’s only going to make his inevitable deaths and reincarnations more painful to bear. For the sake of carrying Ebisu’s wishes across incarnations, Iwami has to detach himself from his master so he won’t fall apart from the emotional toll that comes with it.

Iwami probably doesn’t even have the heart to directly tell Ebisu about his past incarnations and their wish to tame ayakashi. Instead, he’s always told Ebisu to read his predecessors’ journals, which inevitably include information on the subject. And precisely because Ebisu isn’t shown an alternative way to be the god Ebisu (and especially since his journals are all the pointers he has about who he supposedly was as an adult), he ends up thinking that taming ayakashi and carrying out his previous self’s wishes is the only way to be Ebisu. After that, Iwami can rationalise that it had been Ebisu himself who made the choice and that he is now obligated to help Ebisu to achieve it.

While Iwami has his own reasons for not sharing too much with Ebisu, Ebisu reads this silence as coldness towards him, that he’s not important enough to Iwami to be allowed to know him better. The flashback of Ebisu with the books shows Iwami facing Ebisu, but in Ebisu’s mind, it’s as good as though Iwami had turned away from him there and then: remaining both physically and emotionally removed. Iwami is abandoning Ebisu to himself.

No matter the incarnation, Ebisu still bonds much quicker with Iwami than other shinki, even Kunimi, his current guidepost. It’s clear who Ebisu’s favourite is.

Ebisu constantly looks to Iwami for guidance, but Iwami keeps silent, thinking it would be best if Ebisu lives his own life without input from him. The flaw in this approach is that its result hurts both Ebisu, who doesn’t want to die, and Iwami, who doesn’t want Ebisu to die either.

This vicious circle keeps them trapped in lives they are unhappy in. Unless Ebisu is shown a different path by Iwami, he can’t change from the one his predecessors took. And unless Ebisu changes what he wants to do, Iwami can’t show him anything else but what his predecessors have always done.

The circle has long-term effects too: with each passing incarnation, Ebisu feels even more pressured to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps, and Iwami has to keep withdrawing himself from Ebisu, all while receiving the reinforced impression that Ebisu does wants to continue this self-destructive work.

By telling Ebisu to live and act on his own wish, Yato has already dealt a significant blow to the circle. But reforming only Ebisu’s mentality isn’t enough to permanently get rid of it; Iwami’s mindset must also change.

Up till now, Iwami’s been “protecting Ebisu’s name” by supporting whatever Ebisu decides to do, letting him finish what he had started in his previous lives. But after Kazuma’s confrontation, Iwami finally acts on a desire to protect the current Ebisu, not just Ebisu's “wishes” anymore.

Father’s defeat is as important to Ebisu as it is to every other character. Notice that when Kazuma tries to get Iwami to give him something helpful to stop Father, he tells Iwami “the root cause is clear", and that he could put an end to Ebisu’s fate of living short lives by helping destroy Father.

From the flashbacks, Ebisu has been tailing Father's work ever since he retrieved the first Koto no Ha (the flashback where baby Ebisu discovers a mask is from the Heian era, which approximately when Father starts using masks). Father has been using his masks to wreak havoc in the mortal world, but because Ebisu is right behind him learning how to tame them (even if it’s from scratch), Father has a form of check and balance, no matter how crude or underdeveloped it may be. Though Ebisu himself doesn’t yield much success in actually taming ayakashi, his accumulated knowledge about it alone can help other characters take Father down.

There are many reasons why Ebisu follows his predecessors’ wishes that stem from inertia, but Father has been the active reason why Ebisu cannot afford to stop taming ayakashi.

What’s especially tragic about this set of panels is that Iwami’s wish for the young Ebisu had always been for him “to be whatever his heart desires”. Instead, in his efforts to preserve Ebisu’s ‘wish’ across incarnations, he’s ended up achieving the exact opposite.

And that’s why Iwami agrees to help Kazuma, even if it means breaking an old promise to Ebisu. Change starting to happen: from someone who had been afraid of deviating from the previous Ebisu’s wishes, Iwami now hopes to save the current Ebisu from having to die continuously by betraying his predecessor.

Once the sorcerer is stopped, Ebisu’s fate won’t be limited to taming ayakashi, and he'll be able to be a god of fortune without having to die for it. Iwami will finally be allowed to raise a single Ebisu, one who will no longer die young and forget him. And Ebisu could really use a father who can show that he cares for him.

(sorry this is so long I got pretty carried away with this lmao)

#noragami #ebisu #iwami #invgoogle attempts analysis #noragami analysis

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digitalyogesh · 3 years

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Patanjali ashwagandha

Will PATANJALI ASHWAGANDHA HELP IN INCREASING TEENAGER’S HEIGHT? GET THE COMPLETE DETAILS HERE. Patanjali ashwagandha

Ayurveda has been the most established clinical framework known to India and the world. The idea of mending through normal techniques and the emphasis on all encompassing improvement truly just as intellectually have paralyzed logical specialists. However the contention between the two forges ahead the lines of proof, the contrast between what’s normal and which’s man-made is self-evid Patanjali ashwagandha ent. In actuality, Ayurveda is a blend of science and solid living. It has faith in uncovering the reason for medical conditions. The measurements are somewhat stunning. Around 240,000 American grown-ups lean toward Ayurvedic prescription as expressed by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Discussing the country where it has thrived for more than 3,000 years, 77 percent of India Patanjali ashwagandha n families utilize these items as indicated by the report proposed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

THE CONTRIBUTION OF AYURVEDA IN HEIGHT GROWTH

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Allow us to zero in on the distinctions that s Patanjali ashwagandha tature can cause in the strength of an individual concerning research examines. In an examination led for a very long time with 6,000 grown-ups, researchers have Patanjali ashwagandha presumed that type 2 diabetes cases are higher in diminutive statured individuals. Not just that, odds of coronary illness and stroke decline with an increment in tallness. Pregnancies of taller ladies are longer than more limited ladies. Hair sparseness in the later phases of life is more in bantam folks. It is shocking to note what the most essential and discernible component can do to a person during a lifetime. Patanjali ashwagandha

Job OF ASHWAGANDHA IN HEIGHT GROWTH

To have the option to focus on the objective, we need to comprehend essential realities identified with stature. Men enjoy a more p Patanjali ashwagandha rominent benefit as they can develop till the age of 25. On account of ladies, this situation is totally unique. With the beginning of their first periods, young ladies just grow an inch or two. The development cycle happens when a young lady is 14 or 15 years of age. For men, the age is normally 16 and proceeds in their twenties. Pubescence happens inside a time of two to five years. Singular contrasts emerge however that steers clear of the time spent on pubescence.

The other reality that requires consideration is about what you can and can’t handle. Hereditary qualities as of now decide the actual attributes one will create with time. This rate is the most elevated and takes up 60-80% of the development designs. The part with singular control is 20-40%. This is the place where Patanjali ashwagandha the job of ecological elements like nourishment and exercise comes to play. Time for a little history and world insights. During the eighteenth and nineteenth hundreds of years, America had the tallest individuals on the planet, a title that is presently delighted in by the Netherlands. Nations that come up short on these measurements incorporate Indonesia, Bolivia, India, and the Philippines. Patanjali ashwagandha Did you know the piece to be sure?

The simplest and the most normal Patanjali ashwagandha method of disposing of past occurrences, present development levels, and future results that dwarfism can bring, as endorsed in Ayurveda, are spices. The one that beat the rundown is Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is a Sanskrit word meaning the smell of the pony. It functions as an enhancement and can be burned-through in any structure a tablet, powder, and container. How could any spice impact development designs in teens? Human development chemical, as the name proposes, is liable for improving height. GABA, an inhibitory synapse aids the interaction. It impedes the unrequired cerebrum fla Patanjali ashwagandha gs that trigger feelings like uneasiness, stress, and dread. Simultaneously, it makes a quieting impact. With the lively progression of supplements like nutrients and proteins the correct way, cell restoration is fortified. As well as expanding the possibilities of stature in teens, it is additionally about bone development, bone thickness, Patanjali ashwagandha muscle develop, and strength. Ashwagandha advances rest, in a roundabout way serving the reason. One spice, limitless advantages!

Likewise, READ ABOUT HIMALAYA ASHWAGANDHA >> Patanjali ashwagandha

HOW DOES ASHWAGANDHA HELP IN HEIGHT GROWTH?

More often than not we realize what can anyone do however we consider over the subject of how. Here we have alternatives to browse. Patanjali ashwagandha On account of tablets, 1-2 tablets each day are fitting. Counsel a doctor. Working examples and hypersensitivities differ from one individual to the next. Medium or little admission of the medication is effectively endured by the body. However, that isn’t the situation with pregnant ladies. They ought to keep away from it totally as it can cause early conveyance. Another capacity is the support of cortisol levels that can cause the issue of going bald. At the end of the day, benefits have limits whenever burned-through carefully. Ashwagandha as a powder can be overwhelmed by warm water, milk, and nectar. Patanjali ashwagandha It tends to be devoured double a day, as coordinated by the doctor. It is without sugar and can be utilized by diabetic patients as well. It is additionally useful in getting sound periods in ladies. The day by day admission shouldn’t surpass more than 2.5 gm. The benefit that powder offers is that it kills the conceivable negative incidental effects as admission is with different wellsprings of sustenance. Alongside stature, it likewise centers around broad health. Patanjali ashwagandha

THE SUITABLE PRODUCT

The market is overwhelmed with items planning to expand stature and boosting certainty that it becomes amazing to pick the right one. Patanjali ashwagandha As a client, we take a gander at factors that fulfill our necessities. It very well may be value, amount, quality, and dependability towards a brand. With the mental stunts that promotions play on us, it turns out to be extremely challenging to sort out and con Patanjali ashwagandha sider something dependable. Here, we will zero in on supplements. The most well-known strategy that a shopper should utilize is checking the Supplement Facts name. It is a rundown giving the fundamental data of the current item. This is the piece of the bundling with subtleties like the dynamic fixings, the sum per filling in just as different fixings, like fillers, fasteners, and flavorings. The maker makes you mindful of the amount to be utilized once or every day. It is fundamental to include a medical care supplier prior to settling on choices or the outcomes might end up being the most noticeably terrible.

The main maker and merchant of Ayurvedic items known to India and the world is Patanjali Ayurved or Patanjali. It is an Indian worldwide purchaser bundled merchandise organization situated in Haridwar. What makes it an appealing choice? The brand takes into account a wide scope of crowds from children to the old matured with regards to drugs, nourishment enhancements, and excellence items. The impact that Baba Ramdev appreciates with his advancement of yoga is excellent and restores the well established upsides of our 3000-year-old Ayurvedic custom. It legitimizes the adage ‘old is gold. Patanjali ashwagandha cost too is entirely reasonable. Astounding that they fulfill the greater part of the boundaries that a client expects: pocket-accommodating costs, quality affirmation, eco-accommodating, simple accessibility, and a made-in-India stamp. Patanjali ashwagandha

ABOUT PATANJALI ASHWAGANDHA

Patanjali Ashwagandha container is a 20 gm load with 20 cases. It helps upgrade tallness and is gainful for weariness, anxiety, and shortcoming. Patanjali ashwagandha It tends to be additionally utilized in the treatment of muscle insufficiency, gastric issues, and joint pain. It expands the energy of the body cells normally and allows them to develop. It not just chips away at the actual attributes of an individual yet mental improvement too by expanding memory and intellectual prowess. The fixings incorporate Ashwagandha Ghansat and Ashwagandha churna. It ought to be burned-through in a similar system, that is, 1-2 cases twice day by day, on the proposal of a doctor. Patanjali ashwagandha

Patanjali Ashwagandha churna alleviates pressure and lifts resistance. It is produced using Ashwagandha, otherwise called Indian ginseng. I Patanjali ashwagandha t eliminates indications of nervousness and melancholy, supports cerebrum and sensory system related exercises, and fortifies. It has cell reinforcement properties that assistance in the recuperation of infirmities and in rejuvenating the body. More or less, it adjusts the doshas, Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, that is, physical-enthusias Patanjali ashwagandha tic prosperity. They ought to be devoured on the suggestion of a doctor. What is better-powder or case? Ashwagandha is harsh yet the powder is better when contrasted with a container. The powder is normally delivered while the case has added substances. Containers go th Patanjali ashwagandha rough more techniques during their creation while patanjali ashwagandha powder structure has more surface region which works on its adequacy. A tablet is estimated as far as amount and is an artificially created synthetic I Patanjali ashwagandha

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nikhilsinghji00o · 3 years

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Male Height Growth Age Limit

With regards to diminished fearlessness in men, quite possibly the most widely recognized purposes for it's anything but being sufficiently tall.

That is on the grounds that taller men are regularly more fruitful and more extravagant than the rest, in addition to they appear to wind up with the most blazing ladies on the substance of the planet! Furthermore, this is the reason it is altogether not unexpected for a diminutive man to feel lacking and keep thinking about whether he can become taller.

All in all, what is the age furthest reaches of development in guys? Researchers say that development spray in young men happens somewhere in the range of 12 and 15 years of age. When that they are somewhere in the range of 16 and 18 years of age, a great deal of them quit developing. Nonetheless, note that there are consistently special cases for the standard, and that is the reason a few guys may keep on becoming taller.

Male height growth age limit

You are pondering about as far as possible with regards to stature development in guys in light of the fact that most probable, you are as of now in your 20s or 30s, and you might want to know whether your present tallness could in any case change.

Indeed, you will gladly realize that it is still a lot of workable for you to appreciate tallness increment regardless of whether you are far beyond adolescence. On the web, you can without much of a stretch run over tales about guys who became taller, and some of them made progress regardless of whether they are now in their 40s!

Try not to quit perusing this article on the off chance that you might want to find out about the male tallness development breaking point and how it tends to be opposed. Beneath you will run over a couple of vital issue that a stature cognizant male like you should know.

Development Plates are Major Role Players

Your stature is because of various components. The qualities are a significant determiner of your tallness — up to 80% of it is affected by your DNA. Your identity is likewise a vital factor.

For example, a male Australian is for the most part taller than a male Indonesian dependent on a stature graph of men in various nations.

Be that as it may, when the tallness is being discussed, the purported development plates will without a doubt be referenced. Set forth plainly, development plates are spaces of the bones that are comprised of ligament, and they are the place where new bone tissue structures. They are situated at the closures of long bones, like the bones in your legs and arms.

The development plates in young men will in general quit creating new bone tissue by around 16 years of age. This is the motivation behind why, prior in this article, we referenced that guys as a rule quit filling in tallness when they arrive at 16 to 18 years of age.

Note, in any case, that occasionally the development plates close previously or following 16 years of age. It is because of this why a few young men will in general quit developing before 16 years of age, while others continue developing following 16 years of age.

Supplements and Exercise are Factors, Too

Above, we discussed the way that as much as 80% of your tallness depends on the DNA that you procured from your folks.

This solitary implies that the excess 20% is because of some different elements. It is consequently precisely why regardless of whether your folks are short, it is still a lot of feasible for you to have normal or even better than expected tallness!

Having a fair eating regimen is an absolute necessity, particularly while the development plates are as yet creating new bone tissue. That is on the grounds that it permits the body to acquire every one of the supplements important for ideal bone development.

We as a whole realize that calcium is a fundamental supplement for the bone, and that is the reason the admission of milk and dairy items is strongly prescribed for the individuals who might want to become truly tall.

Researchers say that supplements like potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, fluoride, nutrient D, nutrient A, B nutrients, and protein are significant too to ensure that the bones will actually want to develop without inconvenience.

Remaining genuinely dynamic is strongly suggested, as well. Participating in exercise and sports urges the unresolved issues through expanded human development chemical levels.

Specialists concur that high-sway proactive tasks like running, bouncing, moving, and playing b-ball are a portion of those that can urge a male to become taller.

So in the event that you were at one time a kid who didn't care for playing tag with your companions, then, at that point it very well may be the motivation behind why you are not totally content with your stature nowadays.

It's Never Too Late to be Taller

Since you are now in your 20s or 30s and your development plates have since quite a while ago shut doesn't really imply that you need to quit developing. A great deal of men's examples of overcoming adversity about becoming taller notwithstanding being past adolescence will disclose to you that there's as yet an opportunities for you to turn into a tall male!

In all honesty, something as basic as possible assist you with turning into a taller individual. That is on the grounds that it permits you to extend your spine, consequently empowering you to stand tall.

Regardless of on the off chance that you are plunking down, standing up or strolling around, consistently keep your stance appropriate. You can do this by keeping your spine straight, your shoulders somewhat pulled back, and your jaw corresponding to the floor.

Having great stance can likewise build your self-assurance, which is something that no lady in the world can oppose on the grounds that being certain is related with progress and acclaim.

Prior, we discussed practicing and playing sports to help the degrees of development chemicals. Indeed, you should continue being an actually dynamic male regardless of whether your development plates have quit working quite a while past.

That is on the grounds that it can assist with keeping your bones sound, subsequently bringing down your danger of experiencing osteoporosis. A sort of bone illness, osteoporosis, can make you inclined to having cracks.

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fuckyeahjamieandclaire · 7 years

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Claire Randall Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) knew when she went back through the stones to the future, she was leaving Jamie (Sam Heughan) behind forever. She did it for the sake of their unborn child, because as she told Parade, “If it hadn’t been for Brianna, Claire would have stayed with Jamie, would have gone to Culloden, and would have gladly died on that battlefield next to him.”

But she does have Brianna (Sophie Skelton) to care for, so it’s back to Frank (Tobias Menzies) and the 1940s for Claire, as she promised Jamie. Over the years, Claire and Frank both put their best foot forward to share a harmonious marriage, but the ghost of Jamie always comes between them.

“Many people have marriages of convenience in some way, and, I think, that’s what Claire and Frank essentially have in the end,” Balfe says. “There is love there, there’s respect there for sure, and she admires the father that he is, the man that he is, but there’s no passion there. There’s no intimacy, really. They’ve forged this alliance which is, ‘We’re going to coexist, we’re going to support each other, and we’re going to raise this daughter the best that we can.’”

So Claire devotes her energies to becoming a doctor, which we will get to see when the “All Debts Paid” episode airs Sunday night.But before tuning in, check out our exclusive interview with Balfe, in which we discuss how Claire gets past her grief at being separated from Jamie, her marriage of convenience, Claire as a doctor, leaving her daughter behind, and more.

Season 3 is different because Jamie and Claire are separated, not just by miles, but by centuries.

Well, they both believed each other has died, so for them, they’re both widows when we meet them. And they both deal with it in very different ways and they both are in very different circumstances. For Claire, she can’t collapse and do nothing because she has a child to look after. So, I think that’s a big drive for her to try and move on, even though it’s heartbreaking. It’s difficult in that time to be a single mother, so when Frank offers her this solution or this refuge, in a way, she has to take that opportunity. I think that she feels that because Jamie is dead her only option is to try and push forward.

The character of Claire feels different when she goes back to the 1940’s. The word brittle comes to my mind. Where you think her head is when she first comes back?

I think this goes back to the previous question. She’s a woman who is in grief, but doesn’t really have the opportunity or the luxury to express that, so there’s a lot of suppressed emotion. She’s a lot more, brittle is a good word, but repressed. The Claire that we know from previous seasons is very earthy and elemental, I always think of that with her and Jamie. But I think she’s going to stay on that path until she meets Jamie again, and then you see her shed those layers.

The scene in Episode 1 where Dean Jackson is telling her that women can’t be doctors, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. What a chauvinist.”

I think that’s the moment she decides she’s going to go to medical school.

Frank knew that what his boss was saying was really annoying Claire, but he kept still.

I think he had to. We have to remember the social requirements of that era. Frank’s starting a new position at a very prestigious university and he has to kowtow to his superiors in a way. But then, the scene after that when they’re walking out, he checks in on her and he’s, “Are you sure you’re all right?” I think there had been a line later on, I think it got dropped in the edit, but it was something about, “I’m surprised you didn’t go after that guy.” I think you could sort of see it just in the looks.

In real life, you have only aged one year but your characters are aging 20 by the time they get back together. What is it like to portray your characters at an older point in their life?

I think a decision was made early on that we didn’t want to do loads of prosthetics. Hopefully, we have a long way to go with the show and you want to leave places to go, first of all, but it’s very hard to make a lot of prosthetics look natural and real. We all wanted to do it more about how the character feels and how the character carries themselves rather than it be about adding tons of wrinkles or whatever. Obviously, we both have changes in our hair and there’s a little bit more salt and pepper in there, but also Claire is 50; Jamie is only 43.

That’s not super old and in the books Diana [Gabaldon] talks about how well they’ve aged. But, it was an interesting opportunity to get to play an older woman and to be able to show those things on TV, because I think it’s a taboo, this whole thing about aging in our culture at the moment.

When they come back together is it a more mature love or because they have been apart is it the same young love that they had?

I think in terms of the relationship, actually, it’s: Who are you now? Who have you grown into? Within that, there’s also a slight regression. It’s like when you go home, you’re always going to be sort of a teenager in your parents’ house. It’s the same with Jamie and Claire; they meet on such a fundamental soul level that they’re always going to be slightly ageless with each other, so the passion is still there and all of that.

What was it like working on the ships in South Africa?

First of all, when we got to South Africa, it was 28, 30 degrees one day at work. For me, there was a little while where it was just me and a bunch of sailors. It’s just so different and these sets are so contained. You’re so dependent on the wind, or if it’s too much wind. It was just logistically such a different experience. But, the sets are beautiful. I think it’s going to add such an incredibly interesting dynamic to the show.

Because they’ve had so much adventure, do you think that Jamie and Calire could ever settle down and live a quiet life?

I would say with Claire, her whole thing in Season 1 was she’s never lived anywhere long enough to have a home. Probably Boston was the longest she’s been anywhere for any length of time. I do think it’s possible. But, I do think they are sometimes their best selves when faced with adversity.

What’s it like working with an actress — Sophie Skelton — who’s only 14 years younger than you and couldn’t really be your daughter?

Sophie is, first of all, amazing. It’s been so nice to work with her and it’s been so nice to have her around. She’s such a lovely girl, she’s such a talented actress and we have a lot of fun together.

How does Claire bring herself to decide she can leave her daughter behind and go back through the stones ?

That was a really tough part. I can’t imagine ever doing that. We talked a lot with the writers about how to convey that and, at one point, there was a conversation that Claire has with Roger (Richard Rankin) and it was like, “This conversation should be with Bree.” I think the only reason she could go is that Bree finally is the one that tells her to go. Without Bree’s permission, she never could do it.

Last season we had those beautiful clothes in France. What’s it like to do a whole different look?

For me, I just adored the ‘60s looks. It’s such a glamorous era. There’s so many of the outfits that I was begging [costume designer] Terry [Dresbach] to make me doubles or let me take things home at the end of the season. It’s such a glamorous era and it was also nice to play with how Claire is now a powerful professional but also very reserved. It was nice to see that represented in her clothes as well.

This could potentially be ten books. Are you in for the whole time?

We’ve signed for seven. We’ll be age appropriate by the time we get there.

#outlander #outlander starz #caitriona balfe #claire fraser #jamie x claire #3x06 #a. malcolm #Brianna #character: claire beauchamp #tv news #people: caitriona balfe #tv: s3 #otp: jamie x claire #queue

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fuckyeahclairebeauchamp · 7 years

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So Claire devotes her energies to becoming a doctor, which we will get to see when the “All Debts Paid” episode airs Sunday night.

But before tuning in, check out our exclusive interview with Balfe, in which we discuss how Claire gets past her grief at being separated from Jamie, her marriage of convenience, Claire as a doctor, leaving her daughter behind, and more.

Season 3 is different because Jamie and Claire are separated, not just by miles, but by centuries.

The character of Claire feels different when she goes back to the 1940’s. The word brittle comes to my mind. Where you think her head is when she first comes back?

The scene in Episode 1 where Dean Jackson is telling her that women can’t be doctors, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. What a chauvinist.”

I think that’s the moment she decides she’s going to go to medical school.

Frank knew that what his boss was saying was really annoying Claire, but he kept still.

In real life, you have only aged one year but your characters are aging 20 by the time they get back together. What is it like to portray your characters at an older point in their life?

When they come back together is it a more mature love or because they have been apart is it the same young love that they had?

What was it like working on the ships in South Africa?

Because they’ve had so much adventure, do you think that Jamie and Calire could ever settle down and live a quiet life?

What’s it like working with an actress — Sophie Skelton — who’s only 14 years younger than you and couldn’t really be your daughter?

How does Claire bring herself to decide she can leave her daughter behind and go back through the stones ?

Last season we had those beautiful clothes in France. What’s it like to do a whole different look?

This could potentially be ten books. Are you in for the whole time?

We’ve signed for seven. We’ll be age appropriate by the time we get there.

#caitriona balfe #outlander #parade magazine #interviews #claire fraser

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goginame · 5 years

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THE SUBLIME: TURNER, FRIEDRICH, PETER ROSTOVSKY

THE SUBLIME

THE FACE OF THE INFINITE. Interdisciplinary course by Gloria Pizzo State exam school year 2011/2012

Class 5F, Paolo Candiani Art School

THE SUBLIME

THE FACE OF THE INFINITE.

Thunderstorm clouds that gather among lightning and thunders, mountain ranges that stretch for miles, volcanoes and hurricanes that are unleashed in all their destructive power, oceans surrounded by sunsets or dominated by starlit pulsating stars ...

The indomitable spectacles of nature have always been the source of attraction and admiration of man, incapable of embracing its immeasurable magnitudes.

This feeling of displeasure becomes the starting point of the human imagination's capacity, of the expansion of the human mind in the face of the infinite and above the ordinary mediocrity.

The fascination of the earthquake, of infinite and discordant sensations that run through the human soul, in contemplation of nature, was therefore the reason why I decided to investigate the feeling of the sublime, as a form of fulfillment of man in tension towards the infinite.

In the course addressed, I pursued and deepened the search for the sublime, starting from its definition and presenting it through the main exponents of philosophy, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, of Italian literature, Giacomo Leopardi, English, William Wordsworth, and art, William J.M. Turner, Caspar Friedrich to the present day with Peter Rostovsky.

Introduction

With the advent of the Romanticism affirmed in Europe around 1830, the spheres of passion, irrationality and sentiment,which had been set aside in the neoclassical period in favor of rationality were re-evaluated thus also re-evaluating individual genius and inspiration.

The romantic poetics is based on the concept that nature does not produce the ideal beauty, but images that can inspire two fundamental feelings: the beautiful and the sublime.

The sublime, in fact, differs from the beautiful because, while this arouses in us feelings of calm and serenity when we we find ourselves in front of a harmonic form, the sublime is born from the representation of the formless and provokes in our soul sensations of thrill and emotion.

In beautiful, the soul is simply attracted to the object; in the sublime, on the other hand, it is at the same time attracted and rejected by it, so much that the pleasure aroused by the sublime is not a positive joy, but rather a “negative feeling.”

Investigation into the Beauty and the Sublime of Edmund Burke

The work that summarizes the many components of the sublime and organizes them in an analytical system is “Investigation into the Beauty and the Sublime” of Edmund Burke (1757). Burke definitively distinguishes beauty from the sublime and refers beauty to sociability, the sublime to the instinct of conservation.

Asserting that the passions that concern self-preservation and that refer mainly to pain or danger “are the strongest of all passions” and that the sublime is the strongest emotion that soul is capable of feeling.

The concept of Sublime for Kant

Even for Kant the feeling of the sublime arises from a threat, “a momentary impediment” followed by “a stronger outpouring of vital forces”, and since the soul is at the same time attracted and rejected by the object, the pleasure of the sublime is called a “negative pleasure”.

Among the scenarios suggested by Kant are “mountains that rise up to the sky”, “deep abysses in which the waters rush down furiously”, which arouse astonishment that borders on “fear” and “sad meditations”.

Therefore is caused by the effects of what is in nature absolutely great, unlimited, infinite or by the spectacle of the power of phenomena. Kant distinguishes in his analysis two types of sublime: a sublime that he defines as mathematical and a dynamic sublime.

According to the philosopher, the mathematical sublime arises in the presence of something immeasurably large, for example the mountains, the starry sky or the galaxies. Faced with these realities, an ambivalent feeling is born in the human soul: on the one hand, in fact, we feel a sense of displeasure due to the fact that our imagination is not able to embrace its greatness, on the other hand, instead, we feel pleasure, because our reason brought to rise to the idea of the infinite, in relation to which the same immensities of creation itself appears small.

The sublime dynamic arises instead in the presence of natural forces, for example in the contemplation of large cloudy masses that pile up during a storm, storms of lightning and thunder, erupting volcanoes, hurricanes, stormy oceans and so on.

To witness these events in which nature shows all its power, being far from them, produces in us a sense of material smallness if we compare ourselves to the power of nature; later on, however, we feel an ideal coolness feeling due to the fact that we are thinking human beings.

Therefore, the emotion of the dynamic sublime becomes exaltation and anguish, changing from depressive that was in the beginning, into an enthusiasm.

Kant, consistent with his "Copernican" aesthetic evolution, believes that even the sublime, like beauty, is not an objective and ontological property of things, but the fruit of the encounter of our spirit with them. The sublime, therefore, does not reside in the reality that is in front of us, that is to say in the events or objects in question, but in our own soul.

The Sublime in art

Romanticism

In Romanticism, the artists represented the contemporary historical moment and the existential problems of man such as meditation on the passing of years. on death, so the elements that they characterized their art were:

The representation of a sublime spectacle capable of arousing strong emotions; Realistic details; The use of color to make the shape and the space; The use of contrasting pure color spots. Painting interpreted the condition of man and used the landscape as a metaphor to indicate his destiny.

The representation of nature was one of the favorite themes of romantic artists, Turner represented it in its terrifying and destructive aspects.

William J.M. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), English painter, expressed in his works the disturbing relationship between man and nature, an immense and unknown nature, in front of which man can only meditate on his loneliness and his fragility .

Turner's art is fully ripe in the painting “The Snowstorm”, from 1842. Meanwhile he continues to travel and produce great artistic works they had aroused admiration, but also contempt for those, who did not understand his genius and its innovative scope.

Turner, in “The Snowstorm”, which represents a steam boat caught by a snowstorm, it goes beyond the realistic data to stage a vision on the canvas of overwhelming and highly poetic nature.The boat seems to want to fight with the titanic strength against the fury of the storm, but it is useless. It turns out every effort is made against the powerful majesty of nature; this is human progress and science against the immeasurable and sovereign force of the universe.

In watching the storm which with great force and vehemence rages against the boat, the spectator also feels himself in danger.

The painting completely exceeds the descriptive-realistic aspect to assume suggestive-evocative connotations.The vortices of water, air, light, color, like swirls in rapid movement, overwhelm the boat, involving the spectator who feels, witnessing such a grandiose spectacle, a sublime feeling.

Turner himself wanted to experiment and experience this feeling at the age of seventy-seven, letting himself to be tied to the tree master of a ship and literally crossing the eye of a cyclone during a storm.

The work appears as the perfect metamorphosis of the philosophical theme of the sublime of Immanuel Kant that in “The Critique of Pure Reason”, considers the sublime derived not from the relationship between sensibility and intellect, but from the conflicting tension between sensibility and reason.

The feeling of the sublime is felt both when we are dealing

with infinitely large which, in fact, temporal or spatial infinite, and when we are faced with the extraordinary spectacles of nature.

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), German painter, expressed in his paintings, with various situations the relationship of the immense and infinite nature with the finite man looking towards the infinite, vast and powerful, with a sensible fear but also with religiosity .

In the landscape, in fact, Friedrich represents his feelings, the man’s loneliness and his anguish in the face of the mystery of nature and in nature he captures the Sublime, one of the fundamental themes of Romanticism, as defined by the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant.

The landscape of Friedrich transmits melancholy and nature, caught in different aspects, expresses the change of time and seasons, in which the profound solitude of man is identified.

The nature is felt as a living reality, animated in an infinite development. “The Wanderer in a Sea of Fog” represents a sublime situation in which man contemplates in profound silence the infinite nature.

The fundamental theme of this painting is the landscape, in which the man, the protagonist plays the role of the spectator.

The traveler, turning his back, seems to ignore us, but at the same time we identify ourselves with him; together we become part of the picture and scrutinize the indistinct landscape, absorbed in our thoughts, alone, to better contemplate and reflect on what surrounds us.

The predominant colors are brown and gray-blue, which create the effect of light and space.

PETER ROSTOVSKY

Peter Rostovsky(1970), a young Russian artist is a member of the current of Superrealism, one of the latest and most recent experiments of the Neo-Avant-Garde.This current proposes to explore the super real, a mental dimension, that is artistically reworked starting from a photographic representation.Peter Rostovsky, a leading exponent of this current, has a preference for magical-fantastic or realistic-macabre representations, two themes of great emotional impact.

Starting from the idea of the famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich, "The Wanderer on the Sea of Fog", he reinterprets the latter with the technique of Superrealism: an all round sculpture is placed against the background of a painting on canvas.

“Epiphany Model 2” is an installation of 2001 composed of a large circular canvas, on which the full sky of clouds at sunset is painted, and a front carved statuette of a character, who looks entranced, placed on a white pedestal.

The sculpture is placed so precisely to visually coincide with the center of the painting. Rostovsky's reinterpretation, rich and full of evocative charm tends to give back the idea of the sublime, confirming how the dismay and wonder of man in the face of nature nevertheless still is a universal and timeless sentiment. As seen in the painting of Friedrich in fact, the vastness of the sky gives the scene an impression of desolation and underlines the contrast between the human finitude and the infinity of nature, recalling Leopardian expressions that lead us to think of the melancholy and loneliness.

The Sublime in the poetry of Giacomo Leipardi

The infinity, the sublime feelings and emotions conveyed by Friedrich were also expressed by poet Giacomo Leopardi in his “Infinite” with superhuman silences, interminated spaces and very deep stillness:

The poet represents man as a figure "lost in the incomprehensible vastness of existence" he feels the frightful expanse of the infinite. .

If in reality infinite pleasure is unattainable, man can imagine infinite pleasures through imagination.

What stimulates the imagination to construct this parallel reality, in which man finds the illusory fulfillment of his need for infinity, is all that is "vague and indefinite", distant, is unknown.

"The imagination works and the fantastic subtracts the real".

Every feeling or poetic thought whatsoever is, in some way, sublime and produces "an elevation of the soul".

The Leopardian individual is able to rise up and understand a whole universe, and his nobility lies in the fact that he is able to "embrace and contain this immensity with thought"

On the poetic level, infinity perfectly represents the dynamics of the sublime: the sight is limited by the hedge, the boundary between finite and infinite, but there is a "darkness beyond the hedge", forcing the imagination to pursue this beyond.

Then the poet " is holding on to this thought, and arrives at a point where the heart does not fracture for a little.

"The sublime is the ability of the mind to overcome the limit of the sensed reality, penetrating beyond limitations of nothingness and of the unknown which do not arouse fear in the pure state, but a mysterious tremor of the soul.

William Wordsworth

Tinturn Abbey and the Sublime

William Wordsworth was a revolutionary thinker in his time. Wordsworth believed that Man and Nature could not exist dependent on each other, we must combine our memories with our mature experiences. If we are capable of synthesizing these, we can increase our felling intellect or sublime. The idea of the sublime being found in his works. In "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tinturn Abbey," Wordsworth speaks of a presence that "disturbs him with joy," which he defines as the sublime "whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man." In other words, he is explaining that the sublime is not unreachable. More importantly, the sublime also resides in the human consciousness. Wordsworth defines the sublime as the "passions that build up our human soul." Wordsworth's first visit to Tinturn Abbey did not occur when he was a child, there is still the sense of something lost when he returns five years later. He realizes that time has passed the delights of his first visit are over. Fortunately for him, he also understands that this is not the end of his joys, but merely the beginning. "For I have learned," he said, "To look on nature, not as the hour / This small quote represents what Wordsworth mean about synthesizing and combine our memories with the present. Wordsworth believes that he has found the answer to how to rise to the height of "feeling intellect." Imagination and intellectual Love are each in each. Imagination is representative of the child's mind. Intellectual Love is representative of the adult, or philosophic, mind. These two qualities of human mind, Imagination and Intellectual Love are, ideally, inseparable. A combination of these attributes will allow the individual to rise to the height of "feeling intellect" or the sublime.

Bibliografia

Turner , I classici dellArte, edizion iSkira Inchiesta sul Bello e il

Sublime,Edmund Burke, edizioni

Aesthetica Intinerario nellarte,edizioni Zanichelli

J. M.W Turner,The man who set painting on fire, edizioni Thames &

Hudson Sitografia

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime

http://www.peterrostovsky.com/

http://sauvage27.blogspot.it/2009/02/la-tempesta-di-neve-william-turner.html_

http://www.filosofico.net/Antologia_file/AntologiaK/KAN/DABELLo/ALSUBLIME

http://www.parodos.it/filosofia/ii_sublime_di_kant.htm_

http://www.marioe.it/al/Interazioni/SublimeArte_Elementi._htm

http://www.marioe.it/al/Interazioni/SublimeArte_Constable.htm_

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/wordsworth/section1.html_

http://www.italialibri.net/opere/infinito.html

#PETER ROSTOVSKY

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loudenoughtohear · 7 years

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Old Lady House: A Poignant and Meta-Critical Comedy

The third episode of It’s Always Sunny’s 12th season is a masterful takedown of the sitcoms of old. From the multi-camera approach (versus the ensemble shots that dominate Always Sunny) to the physical comedy, to the canned laughter covering the too dark or unfunny aspects of a show, Always Sunny doesn’t shy away from any corner of critique when it comes to the stereotypical sitcom. But, this is something that many reviewers have already pointed out and praised. I would also like to point out another, just as important, aspect of this third episode of season 12. The episode is written by two women comedians, Dannah Phirman and Danielle Schneider. The fingerprints of these female writers are all over the episode, particularly in the poignant, sharp, and witty commentary on sexism both within old sitcoms as well as within the gang dynamic, and the show is even better for it.

Before the title sequence even rolls, the very first jab at the sexism within the gang dynamic is seen. When Dennis suggests that the gang plant cameras inside Mac and Charlie’s mom’s house, Dee objects on the principle that it’s creepy and wrong to spy on unsuspecting women. In response, all of the men agree with Frank (who also happens to be the oldest member of the group) that once women reach a certain age, they are no longer women, but rather just “old people”. When Dee tries to highlight the lack of logic in this thinking, Charlie, frustrated, says, “A man lives and then dies! Why are we having this argument?”. It's a hilarious, and very gang-esque conversation to start the episode off with. It's also a subtle strike against the origins of Always Sunny, when in the first season, Dee was the designated moral center of the show, always dousing the cold water of reason on the rest of the gang’s immoral, and usually, illegal plans. This scene takes that dynamic and plays with it. Dee isn’t objecting from some place of moral superiority, (in fact, once she sees the potential of Old Lady House, she wants to be placed in the show herself) she is objecting because she has a fundamentally different viewpoint from the rest of the gang, as the only member who is a woman.

Later in the episode, Dee even serves as a personified metaphor for Always Sunny. Dee barging her way into a sitcom in which she is not invited or welcome, and then promptly getting stuck in a position where her comedy is only funny when viewed from an angle that the camera cannot see can be taken as an allegory for the show itself. Always Sunny only became a show due to the tenacity of its creators as well as their infamous willingness to make the pilot for 200 dollars. And just like that, they were thrown into the world of TV sitcoms, where their type of humor and style was an anathema to established shows. They developed a cult following, with loyal fans that could see the humor of the show from the “right angle” as it were. And now Always Sunny is in its 12th season, and in contention for longest running sitcom, against The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet.

The second time that the theme of sexism is brought up in the episode is a lethal blow against domestic violence jokes in sitcoms such as The Honeymooners. After seeing his mother almost bludgeon Mac’s mom with a hammer, Charlie comments that it’s simply a “why I oughta” situation and no real cause for concern. When asked by Dennis and Mac to explain, Charlie brings up The Honeymooners and how the husband of the show, Ralph, would always threaten to beat his wife, Alice to the uproarious laughs of the audience. Mac agrees but says the situation isn’t funny when it’s his mom who is threatened with physical violence. Both Dennis and Charlie look away and mumble “yeah...” and “right...” to themselves. It’s a masterpiece. The scene perfectly dismantles the undo nostalgia that many people have for 1950s and 60s sitcoms and television shows, while also highlighting what sets Always Sunny apart from those shows.

It also harkens back to one of my personal favorite episodes of the show, “The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award”, another episode that does a skillful meta-critique of sitcoms, focusing on more modern day ones. In that episode, Dennis convinces Mac and Dee to do a “will they won’t they” thing because “that’s fun for the customers”. Of course, it ends in disaster, after Dee insults Mac’s mom, and in response, Mac begins to choke Dee. Both of these episodes taken together, illustrate just how unique Always Sunny is in the landscape of television, despite being on the air for 12 years. The show doesn’t shy away from awkward situations, or the tragic or extreme conclusions that stem from the gang’s extreme behavior and lack of morals. Always Sunny has neither a laugh track, like the sitcoms of older generations, nor do they “leave space” for one-liners to be delivered and laughed at by the audience. The lack of one-liners, and “TV dialogue” as I like to call it was actually seen as a downside to the show, as many critics labeled the show as humorless people just “yelling at each other”. In reality, the cadence of speech, the yelling, and the lack of space for line then laugh is what gives Always Sunny its authentic feel and unique style.

And this concept does not escape criticism in “Old Lady House: A Situation Comedy“. In one of the funnier moments of the episode, Mac is trying desperately to get his mom to wear make-up and change her attitude so that Dennis will not cut her out of the show. Frustrated with Mac fussing over her, Mac’s mom yells “Fuck you!” at Mac. Dennis adds in a dramatic “oohhh” from the audience, while Mac, flustered, keeps repeating, “that’s a joke”. Mac’s mom essentially telling him to fuck off would be perfectly at home in a regular episode of Always Sunny, despite the crassness of it, and the pitiable implications for Mac. However, scenes like that would never be seen on older sitcoms, or even more modern days ones, like Modern Family or The Big Bang Theory, two of the biggest and most watched modern sitcoms.

As the episode progresses, scenes similar to the one between Mac and his mom begin to pile up, indicating just how unfit the gang is to be on or running a typical sitcom. Bonnie’s OCD rituals become more frequent. Frank goes over to the house to try to “bang” Bonnie (contradicting Frank’s previous statement that he doesn’t see women of Bonnie’s age as women but as old people). Charlie goes over there to try to stop it, yelling at Dee and calling her a “crazy bitch” on his way up the stairs. Charlie pulls Frank off his mom, all the while fending off Uncle Jack’s attempts to touch and hug him. All of this is set to canned laughter within the context of the Old Lady House sitcom, despite the obvious darkness of the scenes.

The critique of sexist elements in other sitcoms is not new to Always Sunny, but this episode, in particular, called out other shows, both young and old, for their sexist view of female characters and where they should stand within sitcoms, and the episode wouldn’t have had the impact it does without those female voices in the script. Without those voices, the episode ran the risk of simply becoming a second, and less impactful and funny The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award.

All in all, I think that season 12 is off to a great start with these first 3 episodes, and I can’t wait to watch the upcoming episodes, especially since many of them are either directed or written by a minority or a woman.

#iasip #its always sunny in philadelphia #charlie day #charlie kelly #dennis reynolds #Dee Reynolds #frank reynolds #kaitlin olson #rob mcelhenney #glenn howerton #its always sunny #danny devito

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inklingpost · 7 years

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If you didn’t think the march was for you, it was, you just don’t realize it.

If you didn't think the march was for you, it was, you just don’t realize it.

If you had told me I would have a possibly lethal pregnancy shortly after I turned 26 years old, there's no way I would have believed you. Things in pregnancy while you are young are supposed to go smoothly. Or so we are taught to believe. I used to think most pregnancy problems or chromosome issues happened after the age of 35. Or at least that has become the norm with medical intervention. The mortality rate for women and children revolving around births has decreased immensely over the decades of science and study.

But there are a lot of things we still don’t acknowledge in our modern day culture. Things that should be part of the conversation as we move forward with the new knowledge we have and how it forms our decisions in every day life as we propel ourselves toward being more sophisticated as a leading nation.

Some people like to complain that the march wasn’t for them because they are “pro-life.”

Guess what? We are all pro-life, so let’s just move on from that rhetoric. The way I see it is we are all pro-life, and then there are sub-categories below it of pro-choice and anti-choice. Either you have a wide knowledge and understanding that every person is very different and medical complications can be vary in scale, and this is an issue that isn’t so black and white, so we have to respect those differences and let a doctor guide a patient through their difficult circumstances. OR you have a fundamental lack of understanding of the complexities of pregnancy and women’s health, so you jumped on board the “pro-life” rhetoric because you don’t want to be “pro-death,” so you feel more comfortable in that zone. But that’s a really naive stance to take because by doing so, you don’t even know what you don’t know, and you don’t even realize you are campaigning against yourself and are endangering lives by trying to make laws based on fear.

The main argument I hear from the “anti-choice” people (that is what I will call you for the sake of this piece) is that you have a religious standpoint you cling to that revolves around the idea that man shouldn’t determine when death calls, only God should. But this is a really poor argument because for 1) you are usurping and assuming you know how your god thinks and behaves, and 2) what about the life of the mother? I’ve heard that the Catholic viewpoint is to save the child and not the mother—which for me holds no weight in rational thinking. Especially if the baby was going to die anyway, why would you not save the mom? And who are you to speak for your god? And that’s all fine if you want to live by those standards, but who are you to force those views on other people with different belief systems? We are a pluralistic nation after all.

The point is, you have the option to choose to let the mother die and save the baby, or you have the option to wait out a pregnancy that may be of risk…you have the option because women spoke out and marched for you to still be able to keep your stance. Taking away the right for a mother to choose her own life over her child’s life by being “anti-choice” is incredibly selfish, and dangerous.

And guess what? You might be taking away your own right to choose your life to live as a result of taking a stance like this. You taking this standpoint of letting laws dictate women’s health, could be the thing that kills you. Or the thing that kills your daughter or the partner of your son or daughter. That’s the part you are forgetting. That’s the human element you are choosing not to acknowledge.

Did you know you could get pregnant with odd, but rare, bad luck circumstances where the pregnancy actually turns into cancer? Did you know you can have a pregnancy where there is actually no fetus that grows? Just an empty sack of amniotic fluid that keeps growing and spiking your hcg levels. I didn’t. Not until I had a pregnancy like that. Abortion actually is just a medical term for miscarriage. It’s a word that has been abused and thrown around to insult already pained women. But did you know that you can have a “missed-abortion” where your body doesn’t miscarry the dead fetus and can poison you? I didn’t, until I had a pregnancy like that. My body apparently wanted a baby so badly it clung to whatever life form there was…even when there wasn’t a life form. And I needed medical intervention.

Here’s the other thing you aren’t taking into consideration those of you in the “anti-choice” category. You aren’t considering the emotional and mental health of the individuals involved. And I make it plural, because it is a family decision…a family’s overall health to be considered. You don’t know what trauma they’ve had prior to these horrible pregnancies, you don’t know how many pregnancies they had like this repetitively reliving the horror and disappointment…it takes a toll. You don’t know what this new trauma might trigger, you don’t know if carrying out a pregnancy might lead to suicide because it’s too emotionally painful to bear. You don’t know what the father wants. If there is already an existing sibling, will the parents be left as shells of themselves for those kids? Will their existing kids be damaged by their circumstances? There’s a lot to consider. It isn’t so simple.

And it could be you that faces it. And then tell me, if you have taken away the right to medical treatments due to law, and if you now stand in these circumstances of dangerous pregnancies, are you still standing by your religious views that this is your time for death and you don’t want to intervene? Would you be ok with watching your impending death, or wait for a possible miracle and then spread your story representing us poorly by saying “it could happen to you too…god could save your life,” offering false hope.

And if that is the case, why couldn’t you just simply say, “this is how it was for me…I was lucky…but it’s very different for everyone, and I can understand why laws shouldn’t play a role in the family dynamics of health care in this way.”

I’m not trying to scare anyone about pregnancy, what we have gone through is not the majority. Triploidy is rare. Molar pregnancies are rare. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s shifted our perspective for everything now when it comes to statistics. If the pregnancies we’ve had are less than 1% of all pregnancies everywhere, and most of those don’t make it into the second trimester, they only know because they tested miscarriage tissue to gain statistics…that means really just a handful of us in this particular instance actually experienced circumstances like we have. But it’s still worth fighting for because it sucks. And nobody needs to make it suck even more than it already does.

Now anytime we are given odds or statistics, we shy away from it. “Oh, you need sinus surgery, but there’s a risk of 1/3,000 that they could puncture your brain and leak fluid.” Awesome, no thanks, that will probably happen to me…because I won the lottery of less than 1% world wide for child loss…so no thank you, I can’t take that risk.

If you didn’t think the march was for you, you are wrong. It was and is for you. I hope you never go through what my husband and I have gone through. But if you do, know that we have marched for you and fought for you in order to face it as gracefully as you can muster through all the shock, PTSD, the heartbreak, and confusion. If or when your religious rhetoric fails you, and you change your mind and want to fight for your life instead, we will be here for you. You will have those options. Or if you choose to honor your stance and say goodbye to your time in this world and leave your spouse or children behind because you think that is your god’s will for you, we will be here for your family after you pass. Because that is your right. Being pro-choice still gives you that right…you aren’t losing anything. But by being anti-choice, you take a great deal away from families facing pregnancies like I have. And I can’t stay silent about that. It would dishonor what I’ve been through. It would dishonor my daughter’s life and story.

Here’s the thing, if you are anti-choice, I ask that you do show up at the next march. I will save a spot for you. Because I want you to see the faces and hear the stories of who you hurt with your rhetoric and votes and desired laws. I want you to bring humanity back to your soul. I want you to connect with us. Because at some point in your life, you or someone very close to you, may find yourselves in similar devastating circumstances that offer enlightenment, and some day, you may really experience the weight of what those laws actually meant for America.

Mary Oliver says it best, “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

And I will leave you with these closing words by Mary Oliver, because I think it sums up my intention nicely,

“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”

I hope we can spread the empathy, connectedness, and protection, and comfort. We need to safeguard what we want America to be. We need to break hearts.

To see more of our story, visit the archive page to start at the beginning.

#womensmarch #womensrights #womensrightsarehumanrights #prochoice #sayhername #stillwithher #plannedparenthood #womenshealthcare #maryoliver #poetry #fuckreligion #feminist

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